


How the Harvest Gets Home

by bethgreenewarriorprincess



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), bethyl - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: s05e08 Coda, Romance, Self-Harm, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-24 19:10:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 59,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7519837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethgreenewarriorprincess/pseuds/bethgreenewarriorprincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never thought he'd see her again. That is until she walked through those gates looking none the worse for wear. Beth came to the safe zone with Morgan Jones, the very man who had helped save her life. Somehow she had survived a bullet to the head. But she has a secret; one that could destroy them all or maybe, it could just save them. Can Beth and Daryl finally be together?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be a Bethyl fic that is post Coda. She does get shot in this one but things are a little more believable with the angle of the gun and I may as well go ahead and tell you that this is not your average Bethyl fic. It will be medically sound with a sci-fi spin. 
> 
> Thanks for reading as always! Until next time, xoxoxo
> 
> PS- Trigger warning for self harm. Do not read if you think it will affect you. Your health is important!

He shoulda told her to stay back. That thought plagued him nearly every day. All the should haves. What he should have done. Things he should have said. That was probably the thing that killed him the most; that she never knew how much she meant to him. That she never knew the words that he felt were now ingrained on his heart. Branded like fire to leather and his bones would never be the same again without the imprint of her sweet smile.

He now carried what he had left of her on his side, faithfully strapped there, a reminder that she wasn't there to remind him sometimes, but her knife could. It could remind him of all the times he'd seen her spear a walker head with it. It could remind him of the time she picked it up out of the ground, stalking off, "I'm gonna get a damn drink." He thought that might have been the first time he took notice of her spunk. He'd known it was there but something about the way he treated her that day had lit a fire under her, as his mama would have said. Once that fire was lit, it burned bright and burned long.

Sometimes that fire that she left him with still burned deep within him. Sometimes it burned with such intensity that he thought he might incinerate from the inside out. Just turn to ashes. Like the dust from whence they came. But he'd told Carol hadn't he, that they weren't ashes. He found himself chasing his tail most days with these thoughts as he watched over the good citizens of Alexandria. The governor or the chancellor as she liked to be called was Deanna and things were alright there. But he was restless. He was used to having room to roam, no rhyme or reason to the days. Just passing of time without it really passing. Just one day blended into the next and they tried to have a schedule there in the town. Even had Saturday night bingo. But the hell of the matter was that he wouldn't know nothing about normal if he tried. That time he spent just him and Beth was about the closest thing to normal he had ever had. It was why he had suggested they stay there. He thought maybe, if…..He stopped himself there. There was no sense in even going down that road.

That night had been the worst of his life until, well. It had been the worst night up to that point. Of course when she had been murdered right in front of his own eyes that trumped all the bad moments in his life, even the ones that his Daddy had time-stamped onto every inch of his skin.

The night she was taken by those hospital pricks had been gut-wrenching. It had all happened so fast. One minute they had been talking in the kitchen, by candlelight no less and he had never felt more at home than he had with Beth. Which was why he was about to tell her how he felt. Not with words, as it would turn out. He told her with a shrug of his shoulders and a sincere hope that she could see it in his eyes how much she had changed him. Made him want to be better. Better than the nothing he was. He kind of felt like he was something when he was with her. And now. He just felt empty.

He might have been too late in saving her from being taken but he knew when they arrived at the hospital that she was leaving with them, come hell or high water. Five minutes later, he was cradling her in his arms, like a limp rag doll, life had drained out of her. Life had drained out of him. He felt like he died that day too as he carried her out of that hospital, an echo of how he had carried her weeks before into the kitchen white trash brunch he had made for her. It was like he had stepped into a funhouse and the mirror distorted a beautiful memory into something wretched and dark. He carried her limp, lifeless body out to her sister, who could do nothing but collapse in a heap on the ground at what she'd seen. Through his pain, he had hated Maggie in that moment because he knew if the situation was reversed, Beth would have looked for Maggie. She wouldn't have stopped until she found her. His heart had been ripped from his chest and though he knew Maggie was her blood, Daryl felt tethered to Beth in a way that he couldn't explain. Especially since it was not something he himself could understand. Not then.

But he did now. He knew what it was. He loved her. He had never loved another human being that wasn't related to him and it wasn't even that kind of feeling that he got when he had been with Beth. He couldn't describe it enough to make it make sense. He could only say that he felt at home. He felt peace and that was something that was priceless to a Dixon.

Her words haunted him. "You're gonna miss me so bad." He did. He had figured that out pretty quick when he'd been so numbed with the pain of missing her that he had burned a circular scar into his body. He had done the very thing he had made fun of her for. He thought it a cruel irony that his words would come back to haunt him. "I sure as hell never cut my wrists lookin' for attention." He fingered the scar on his wrist. It hadn't been a deep enough cut to do any real harm. In that moment, he had just wanted to feel something other than the bone-deep numb that pulled him under and made him never want to surface.

There were two figures in the distance. He quickly dispatched his bow from its regular place on his back and swapped it out for the rifle with the scope. He perched the rifle on his shoulder and looked through the lens.

This had happened before and he forced himself to breathe in and out slowly. Some chick had showed up, blonde hair caked with blood on the back of her head. That's how they had left Beth. This girl's hair was clean as far as he could tell. But she sure was blonde. He shook his head to clear his vision. It wasn't Beth. It would never be Beth. He had to get that through his head.

* * *

"We made it." She couldn't believe it. Finally, after weeks of tracking their way here partially by car and the rest of the way on foot, they had made it. They could make out a town with walls and a large iron gate at the front. It was still a little ways off walking-wise but they had made it. They were at the promised safe zone. She and Morgan had run into Aaron and he had told them where to go and what to do. He was out scouting deep in the hills of Virginia. Beth likened him to a modern day Moses leading his people to the promised land. Beth knew her family was there. Aaron had told her. She didn't know how they would take any of what she knew to be the truth. She knew they'd be happy to see her alive. Which was weird to her. That there was a question of it. But she also knew that she remembered standing in that hallway and how everything had happened so fast. The next thing she remembered she was waking up in a car with the worst headache of her life. It had taken her forever, weeks to be exact, to get the stain of red out of her blonde tresses but the last time she'd washed it a couple days ago it had finally shone with the luster it had once had. She told Morgan she wanted to cut it but he just clucked his teeth at her. Told her she didn't need to go changing all that much before she got to see her family.

"You need to stop and rest?" She asked her travel companion.

"Nah, I'm fine." He limped along. He had turned his ankle about 30 miles back and it had bothered him some but he was for the most part okay. "We're almos' there. Ain't gonna quit now. You?" His warm eyes held a teasing glint.

She smiled back at him brightly. "Not a chance." Beth Greene was no quitter. She figured she had proven that.

Beth fingered her side, expecting to find her knife there, always forgetting that she had lost everything when she'd left Grady Memorial. She may have lost her material possessions but her life? Well guess she couldn't put a price on that. No one could. The sun was setting in the sky as they got there.

On what universe was it possible that she had survived? She had told Daryl back at that cabin that she had made it. She believed it at the time but now? She believed it was something else entirely, only she wasn't sure what. She lifted her hand to her forehead, her index finger sliding over the tiny scar that was still there though it was getting better by the day. She shielded her eyes from the setting sun, trying to see the shadowy silhouette on the watch tower of the community, but it was no use. The sun was blocking every bit of her vision and the face remained in shadow as she and Morgan slowly made their way to the gate. They approached and waited for it to open. She wasn't sure what was expected in this situation but she approached it like walking up to someone's house that you didn't know. Did one knock on a gate? She wasn't sure.

She was saved from having to make a decision by the sound of someone's voice. "Please leave your weapons in the bin provided and step to the gate." Beth looked at Morgan and he nodded. She was uneasy. After everything she had been through she wasn't sure they should just waltz through the gates no questions asked.

"I'd like to speak with the leader of your community." She was proud that her voice had come out strong, sure.

"Wait there. Someone will be with you shortly." The voice over the bullhorn came back at her. No one had shot them yet so she guessed that was good news. She looked back up at the watch tower but she could no longer see anyone.

She didn't have time to wonder where they had gone and the gates were opening. They hadn't had time to even properly widen before a figure squeezed through. A figure she would recognize anywhere, whether she could see or not. She sensed his presence before her before her brain even caught up to the fact that he was there in front of her, chest heaving. "Beth?"

* * *

In that moment that he realized that it was her, he knew he didn't dare breathe. For fear as he exhaled that she would wisp up into the sky, an apparition just like all the other times. He didn't remember radioing his backup for relief. He didn't remember pacing back and forth waiting for them to get there. He didn't remember winding his way down the staircase to the tower. It was only as he waited for the gates to open far enough for him to squeeze through that he stopped and thought about what he would say. For a moment, just a moment before they finally opened he couldn't wrap his mind around her being there, but for a moment he wondered if when the gates opened she would be gone but he had heard her voice. Plain clear. Questioning. She didn't trust them. Good. He'd taught her well to never trust anyone. He couldn't think about why she was here. Why she had survived the unthinkable. He had to see her face to face, had to touch her. He needed proof positive that she was really alive.

And suddenly there she was right in front of him, five feet nothing of blonde hair, whipped back into a ponytail just like always, blue eyes that cut straight to his heart, but gone were the girlish features. Instead she stood before him a woman. Her scars, that he'd barely had time to register the last time he saw her, were fading. Even the telltale circular one on her forehead.

Unbidden it came to him that he had new scars. His fingers mindlessly worked his shirtsleeves down to cover the one he could, the one on his wrist. The one on his hand was there for everyone to see. Some had, but no one said a word to him. They knew. Hell, he figured everyone did. Except for Beth.

"Beth?" His voice barely squeaked out and he didn't recognize the timbre. He had smoked himself damn near into the grave but this? This was a new kind of hoarse. He was near tears and he didn't give two shits who saw him cry. This was Beth. She was alive. He could care less if anyone saw him. Greater men than him had been broken for a lot less.

* * *

She had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in her head. But now that it was here she couldn't think of anything to say. "It's me." It sounded so stupid and her voice came out soft. Childlike. In an instant she was reduced to tears and normally it would make her angry. She was breaking her own rule. _"I don't cry anymore."_ What a liar she was. Here she was with this man and she wondered if he still felt the same way she thought he did.

She had to tilt her head up to be able to look into his eyes and he was looking down into hers and Beth saw the tears form and her own vision went blurry. It's said that once one sense is lost the other four take over. In that moment, that was exactly what happened. Her eyes glazed over with tears forcing her to close them and she couldn't see but she felt his arms come around her. She moved her hands from her sides in sync with the moment, her own arms winding up around his neck as he picked her up off the ground and crushed her to him, his hands splayed across her lower back. She heard his muffled cries but she could not hear the words as they fell from his lips. Her fingertips glided against the back of his neck and tangled in the too long hair. Her own racing heartbeat blended with the one she could feel beating against time on her breastbone. His racing heart against hers. In time she swore they synchronized until they just became one. But maybe that was her girlish heart wanting things that weren't really there.

In the time it took for him to swing her around and then slowly let her slide to the ground, she never let her arms drift from around his neck. She wasn't letting go. "I'm not gonna leave you Daryl. Never again."

They were the last words that she said to him and she'd replayed those moments over and over again in her head, trying to make sense of their last night together, but it was always a jumble. Maybe now that she was here with him, they could put it all together. Just like before.

* * *

She was here. Really here and he knew she was because they had gained a small crowd behind them inside the gates.

"You know these people Dixon?" Deanna's voice came from behind him and he forced himself to let go of Beth long enough to turn. She turned with him, snaking her hand down his arm and her fingers gliding against his, palm against palm until she fit their fingers together. In that moment, he felt the rent in his heart knit together just a little. Maybe, just maybe he was gonna make it after all.

Beth looked curiously from the woman behind Daryl and back to him again beside her. Morgan had come up to stand behind her. "This is Morgan Jones. He's a friend of Rick Grimes." Beth knew she didn't have to say anything more than that.

The lady stepped forward. "Deanna. Deanna Cartwright, Chancellor of Alexandria."

"I'm Beth Greene." She surveyed the woman. She was pretty, hair a lovely mahogany color, almost like Maggie's. Maggie. She couldn't wait to see her sister. The lady in charge seemed nice enough but Beth knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving.

She felt Daryl's hand firm in her own and she squeezed it for reassurance. She wasn't sure if it was for her or him.

"Well if you'll come with me I'll make sure we get you to processing. It won't take long." Deanna turned leaving them no choice but to follow her through the gates. She looked up at Daryl.

"'S okay. They just sign you in, you fill out a form. Then you schedule your interview." Daryl felt stupid telling her all this. They had all done it just a few weeks ago. He'd hated every second of it and he figured of all of them he probably had the least to say but once he'd gotten in there and talked with their doctor, he guessed it was their version of a shrink, Samantha, he'd gotten strangely comfortable and he'd told her all of it. Since then he'd gone back to talk to Sam twice. At first he refused to call them appointments because that meant that it was official. He could hear Merle now. "Go on Darylina, you go on to one of them head shrinkers. Didn't do our mama no good. You jus' remember that." Merle came to him still. It should be odd to him that Merle was just as much of an asshole in the afterlife but it didn't. This was Merle after all.

Sam had told him he was a rare soul. He didn't know about that. He only knew he felt better after he spilled his guts to her. She had a way about her. She was married, had two kids, a white picket fence life. He guessed she was the only one that knew about Beth. How he felt about her.

"Interview?" Beth looked at him questioningly and glanced at Morgan whose eyes were trained ahead of them on the street.

Deanna spoke up. "We have found it's useful to get to know our residents by having an interview conducted by our staff psychologist Dr. Turner. You'll also have a physical exam by our doctor. Pete." She turned and smiled at Beth as they reached the door to the first building, what must be their town hall. "You'll like them. I think you'll both like it here." She smiled again at Morgan and Beth, her eyes sliding over Daryl once before facing back forward and easing the door open.

Inside was an old abandoned post office. It had been converted to a small office with a large vestibule. However, it appeared the mailboxes were being used. "You get mail here?"

Deanna turned to look at her as she sat down at the round table in the center of the room. She gestured to the chairs on either side of it and Beth took a seat next to Daryl, never letting go of his hand. He didn't look like he was in any hurry to let go of her either and that was just fine with her. Morgan took the chair across from them.

"So Greene. Are you any relation to Maggie Greene-Rhee? You said you know Rick Grimes. They all came in with Daryl the same time."

Daryl looked at Deanna. She was always one to cut right to the chase.

Beth cleared her throat. "Maggie is my sister." She didn't want to come right on out and beg.

Deanna's eyes cut questioningly to Daryl's. "Thought Maggie didn't have any remaining relatives."

Daryl started to speak but Beth spoke up first. "Technically she still thinks that's true." Beth couldn't help the small smile that graced her lips as she spoke. The fingers of her free hand came up to her forehead. "There was an accident back in Atlanta. They thought I was dead. I mean I should be dead but somehow I survived."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room. She could feel Daryl's eyes on her. Deanna regarded her quietly for a moment. "You survived a gunshot wound to the head." She gestured with her hand to Beth's forehead where the barely visible mark told the story.

"It sounds unbelievable and if it hadn't actually happened to me, I wouldn't believe it either but he was there." Beth gestured to the man at her side. The man she had spent so much time with.

Daryl cleared his throat. "I don't know yet how she's sittin' here beside me. But I saw it. Saw her go down. It was an accident but." Daryl didn't even bother finishing his sentence. It was plain to everyone in the room that some damn miracle had occurred. Yes he was curious how but the important thing was that she was alive. She was here. Her fingers warm in his own were proof of that. That's what he was holding onto.

"I had a doctor back there at the hospital. He saved my life. Well, he did too." She smiled at Morgan across the table and he ducked his head. He never was one to accept any sort of praise.

"I was just in the right place, right time is all." Morgan statement was simple. Just like he was. She had come to respect him greatly over the past few weeks. Thought of him as family. Almost like a father or the big brother she missed so fiercely.

"Morgan found me in a car." Beth began to explain but Deanna interrupted.

"It's okay Beth. I believe you. You're alive now and we don't get many miracles. Maybe we should just take it at face value and move on. Glad you're here." She made to get up. "If you'll just wait here, Nicholas will be along to process you both. Dixon, seems like you've earned the rest of your shift off."

"Thank you." Daryl didn't know if he was grateful or just in some state of bliss but he found himself smiling at the woman.

She smiled back but she looked at him more like he'd grown horns out of his head. He guessed he didn't smile all that much.

Beth breathed a sigh of relief after Deanna left. She was nice enough but Beth felt out of sorts around her. Maybe it was just being around people again. Civilization. Society even. "Do you like it here?" If Daryl seemed like he liked it here then maybe it was an okay place. From where she had just come, Grady Memorial, she didn't know if she could trust anyone again but being out in the open where walkers roamed and worse, people looked to prey upon you, like wolves, being inside walls might be just what they all needed.

Daryl looked at her. He had a thousand questions and here she was asking one of her own. He knew his questions would have to wait most likely until they were alone. "'S alright." He shrugged. "Maybe it'll be better now." He didn't know where it came from but he was glad of it for it brought out the brightest smile coaxed from her lips, one of those thousand watt ones that he had missed so much.

She smiled at him. Daryl Dixon had just flirted with her? She didn't have time to think on it and they were joined by a tall guy with blonde curly hair. "Hey, I'm Nicholas. You two must be Morgan and Beth. Pleased to meet you." He was all business and a bit hurried. He thrust his hand towards Beth which she accepted a bit awkwardly since it was not the right hand to be shaking and that one was currently very much tied up in Daryl Dixon. She figured it might always be. They'd just be fused together from now on. She wasn't sure she minded the notion.

"Who wants to go first?" Nicholas looked between Beth and Morgan, his expression bright and open.

Beth hesitated. Her instinct was to move her hand to her wrist but currently Daryl had a tight grip on those fingers. She wanted to tell him but she didn't want to do it here in front of Morgan and this new stranger, no matter how friendly he seemed. Not even Morgan knew what she was going to have to tell Daryl sooner or later.

Her travel companion must have sensed her hesitancy. "I'll go."

"Great!" Nicholas said brightly as Morgan scooted his chair back and made to follow him out of the room. "I'll be back before long Beth and we'll get you settled. I know your family will be anxious to see you too." With a curt nod he was gone.

Then it was just her and Daryl. She turned in her chair slightly to face him. Now that they were alone, she didn't know what to say. The silence sat between them but it wasn't uncomfortable.

As if reading her mind Daryl spoke up after eyeing her for a bit. "Used to be a time I couldn't get you to shut up." There it was again, his eyes and that teasing glint in them. He was different. It was a good different and Beth decided, she liked this new version of Daryl Dixon.

Beth giggled and the sound seemed foreign coming from her lips. She looked up at him in surprise. "Wow, that felt weird."

Daryl chuckled. At what he didn't know. Life he guessed and how fate had seemed to do an about face, spitting Beth back into its atmosphere like she'd never been gone at all. "It feels good." He looked at her and for once, he was wishing he'd taken Jessie up on one of her twelve offers to let her cut his hair. He had declined every single one of them and only the last two had been in the form of a verbal reply. The other ten had only been grunts. She'd talked Rick into it the first week they'd been there though Daryl thought it could have something to do with the fact that Jessie was sweet on his brother. He didn't know if it went the other way. At least not yet. Rick was still wearing his wedding band and as far as he knew he didn't plan on taking it off anytime soon.

"Dr. Edwards said I will make a full recovery. I had some problems with remembering things at first. Not like my name or anything. Just remembering what certain words were." Beth began. Her voice was quiet. She found she didn't know where to begin.

"That doctor at the hospital?" Daryl realized she was trying to tell him how the hell she came to be sitting next to him. How she was breathing when, for appearances, when he'd left her the life had gone out of her and was left nothing more than a memory. He thought for a long time that he'd left his soul in that car where they had placed her lifeless body. He figured maybe somehow he had. And it was just now that he was getting it back, on the wings of this angel come back into his life.

"He was the doctor that saved my life. Twice it turns out now. Morgan found me in a car. I don't know how I got there but I'm guessing it had something to do with me getting out from where you buried me, I still don't remember that part, and-."

Daryl stopped her. "Beth, no." He fought to keep himself from crying again. He didn't want to relive those moments, those horrible moments when he'd had to be dragged away by Tyreese, Rick, and Abraham away from her. Away from the herd that was coming. It had taken all three of them to hold him down. All three to keep him tied to the car they had been in. They had circled back the next day but the door was standing open and there was nothing around the car but a pile of bodies and some rather full looking walkers and Daryl had cut open each and every one of them.

He had later found her sweater. That was all. It was torn and tattered beyond anything recognizable other than it had once been a fabric but Daryl knew. It was hers. He'd found the walker he'd been tracking later but on cutting it open, he had found no traces of her. Leaving him no other choice, he'd gone back to the group. They'd never been the same after that. He'd never been the same after that. He told Beth all of this now. And he only left out the parts that would reveal his truth.

"You were right." His eyes met her baby blues and she flashed him that puzzled look, like she did when something wasn't clicking just quite right. She tilted her head sideways.

"Bout what?" Beth caught his gaze between his too long bangs. They were even longer than before. Without even thinking she reached up and her fingers moved up to his bangs pushing them out of his eyes.

Daryl fought the urge to close his eyes and lean into her touch. He needed his eyes open for this. "That I'd miss ya."

Beth's hand fell back to her lap with his admission and she turned herself to face him more fully, her chair scraping the floor of the old post office with an echo sounding off the empty walls. She reached out and grabbed his other hand, now both their hands linked together. "I missed you too. When I first woke up, well both times, I asked for you. Dr. Edwards told me I did. He always wanted to meet you."

Daryl tried not to look too pleased that she must have talked about him. "Me?" Daryl snorted.

""Course. He wanted to meet the guy that taught me everythin' I know." She grinned at him.

"Now how would a doctor in the middle of the city know anything about me teachin' you to fight and track?" Daryl loved this easy banter between them. No pressure. No worries about what came next. This was what he had missed the most about her he figured. He easy it was to just be with her. No expectations.

"He came with us for awhile when we left, me, him and Morgan. Morgan found me in that car and took me back to Grady. Later, after we left there, we came to a small community. It had walls just like this one. There was a lady there about to give birth. She had the baby just fine, but then something else happened and then another and then he just decided that I was well enough to be on my own. He was needed there." Beth was quiet. It was clear that she was having a hard time with the loss of a friend.

"Maybe you could write him. We got mail that goes out twice a month now. I think I remember Carol saying something about Fallview being one of the runs." Daryl offered.

Beth beamed at him. "Real mail?" She shook her head at the notion. It wasn't that long ago that mail that came to your house was nearly obsolete, favored instead the electronic version of communication. Now here they were thrust 200 years into the past; an apocalyptic pony express.

Daryl nodded. "Mmhmm. Just last week, we got word that they are puttin' up a Pizza Hut too."

She nudged his knee with hers blushing under his gaze and that tiny half-smile when he gave when he knew he was being funny. "Stop teasin'." She admonished, although she didn't know. It wasn't like she minded. "I could go for a pizza right now. Lots of melted cheese and pepperoni." She groaned in anticipation. What things they took for granted back then.

"I would have pegged you for one of those goat cheese and spinach kinda girls." He chuckled as she narrowed her eyes at him.

Their thoughts were interrupted by Morgan and Nicholas coming back into the room. Beth was instantly nervous. She had been plying her mind with other thoughts, hoping to avoid the interrogation and the medical exam for as long as possible. "Pete is ready to see you now, Ms. Greene."

Beth looked up at him absently, feeling a wave of nausea roll over her. If she hadn't been sitting down she would have surely passed out. Her breathing got rapid and suddenly she knew what was happening. They didn't happen often anymore but for the first week after she woke up she was plagued with episodes of panic. She couldn't move her fingers and she couldn't figure out why and she looked up at Daryl and finally her fingers were free and she was about to use her hands to push up on the chair to catapult herself from the room when she felt Daryl's hands come up and cradle her face. "Beth. You're safe. I got ya."

She forced herself to breathe in and out, drawing in air like it was her last dying breath. She heard him and she saw him but she couldn't force herself to believe him. She couldn't be safe. Not when her heart thundered away behind her breastbone like it was trying to escape its cage. "No. I don't want to."

His heart broke in that millisecond it took for him to realize that she was talking about the interview process. The look in her eyes could only be described as sheer terror. Whatever it was that was causing it, he just knew it had something to do with what happened to her. He pulled her forward against his chest where she willingly went. He looked over her head to Nicholas. "It's gonna have to wait."

"It's standard procedure Dixon. You know that." Nicholas said.

"I don't give a shit about procedure. You tell Deanna's this is on me, alright? She's been through hell and back. Think we can give her some time to adjust before you go proddin' at her brain. I'll-".

Nicholas held up a hand. "Fine. Fine. I think we made some allowances for ya'lls group when you came in. We'll give her a couple days to settle in. You keep an eye on her though right?"

Daryl nodded. "Yeah man, I got this." Daryl watched the younger man's back as he retreated back out the way he came. Morgan met his eyes and nodded. Daryl tilted his head slightly. He was glad the man was giving Beth her space and at the same time he was glad she had someone with her getting here. He didn't doubt she could have gotten there on her own. But it was nice to know she hadn't been alone the entire time.

In the quiet of the room, Beth's breathing had finally steadied and he made to pull away, but he was in no way prepared for the anguish he saw in her eyes.

"Promise me that no matter what I tell you, it stays between us." Beth looked at him, her eyes begging for him to keep her secret.

"Ain't gonna tell nobody. Ain't nobody's business. You don't _ever_ gotta talk to them if you don't want to." He didn't know how long he could hold them off with their little citizenship process but he knew one thing. They'd have to go through him to get to her.

Daryl saw her hesitation. "Hey." She looked up at him, her watery blue eyes meeting his and he saw it there. That implicit trust. He didn't know what he had ever done in this life or any other that had made this girl place such trust in him, not even questioning that he could fill whatever role that called for. "Nothin' you say to me is gonna change anythin'." He let those words hang between them. There was still no definin' what this was, no matter that it wasn't going to change, but that could all wait for now.

Beth nodded and sniffed. She took a deep breath and moved her hand to the cuff of her right sleeve and pulled it up, exposing the gnarled flesh. It had gotten better since she had first taken off the cast and Edwards had explained it all to her, but a good three inch radius around her wrist was still a mess of puckered skin and silvery scar lines where they'd tried to repair the bite. It was also where they had injected her daily "treatments" as Dawn liked to call them. They had been trying for a cure at Grady. What they hadn't known was they had the cure all along. Well to a point anyway.

Daryl stared down at her arm and looked back up at her expectantly. He had expected, well he didn't know what he expected but he wasn't real sure what he was looking at.

"I was bit". She watched as his face went from one of confusion to sudden clarity and horror, and then fear.


	2. Miles to Go Before I Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth tells the back story of how she was bit, then they figure out where to go next.

_I have promises to keep; and miles to go before I sleep - Robert Frost_

 

_THEN_

_(Funeral Home, 4X13)_

Beth searched around the room frantically, sure that at any moment, walkers would come crashing through the door that she had barely been able to barricade with the small desk chair.

She worried about Daryl wherever he had gone in the house to draw the walkers away from her. She knew he was trying to protect her but she couldn't stand the thought of something happening to him.

Her eyes landed on a glass globe, a snow globe in fact and hurled it at the plate glass window. The latch had been painted shut leaving her with no choice but to break the window. She grabbed her bag off the floor and pulled her sweater sleeve down over her hand and used the makeshift mitten to brush away any remaining shards of glass before hoisting herself up on the sill. She looked out into the night. She could hear the faint growls of a walker but it sounded far away at the moment. It would help if the whole funeral home was not shrouded in trees, maybe then the moon would be allowed to peek through and enable to her to better gauge the distance between the window and the ground.

As she dropped to the uneven terrain outside the window, her ankle twisted again causing her to cry out slightly. Her heart flew to her ears in that moment because a walker rounded the house and reached for her. She managed to dodge it and debated on whether or not to limp away and outrun it or tackle it now. She chose the latter and reached for her knife at her side, gripped the handle and brought the blade down into the walker's skull, ending its second life with a sickening squelch. She pulled the knife back out of the walker's head and turned to leave and she felt her sleeve catch on something. Or what used to be someone. A flash of blonde hair and a scream jolted through her memory. Another night where they had to run from a herd. A walker had her arm, just like Patricia. She fought panic as she tried to free herself from its grasp stumbling toward the road. It must be newly turned was the last thought she had before it closed its jaws down on her forearm. She yelped in pain and finally was able to shift her knife to her left hand and awkwardly brought it up. She saw the headlights and the walker did too. She barely had time to register anything before she passed out in the road.

* * *

_NOW_

_(Alexandria Safe Zone)_

Daryl tried to process just what it was she was telling him. There was no way she could have survived. Not for this long. He added up the days in his head; recalled how long they said it took Bob to turn, how it had happened with Tyreese, Jim. But Beth had been shot. It was like he had stepped into some kind of alter reality where nothing was real but she was. Sometime during her telling of her story her hand had drifted into his and he gripped her delicate fingers within his. So she was real. She was really there. He turned her arm over again after she finished speaking and stared at it so long that he then felt ashamed of doing so. Because he knew how he'd feel if she were to stare at his.

How had she survived? How had she survived all of it? His brain went straight to crazy thinking and he thought maybe he had been right all along and she was indeed an angel or some other worldly being. She had to be to be able to survive all that she had, right?

"How?" Daryl's eyes searched hers and he saw a million things flash in them and he thought maybe she might be just as confused as he felt. He was not confused about how he felt about her. He'd told her that nothing could change it and well he guessed he'd proved himself right.

"It's why they took me. Because I'd been bit and they had the cure. Or they thought they did. It never worked before me." Beth's voice faded before she rolled her sleeve back down. "Somehow I'm different. Dr. Edwards said I'm immune. To whatever virus it is that makes the walkers what they are. I can't catch it or whatever." He wasn't saying anything and it was making her nervous. He brought his thumb up, putting it in his mouth and chewing on the corner. Just like he always had.

He looked at her. "So you can't get sick?"

"No. They even gave me the virus again but my body fought it. He said what they gave me might have something to do with why the bullet didn't damage anything vital. He was able to stop the bleeding after I got to the hospital but it took me days to wake up. The cure had never really worked on anyone before me. And maybe Noah." She looked at him hopefully and then at the door that led to the street. "Is he here?"

Daryl shook his head sadly. "'M sorry. I know he was your friend."

Beth looked at him and took a shaky breath. "How?"

"On a run, couple weeks back. It was right after we got here. He shouldn't have gone. I should have told him no, but he wanted to do his part." Daryl shrugged. He had felt pretty similar when Zach had died. His fault. Just like Beth getting taken was his fault.

"It wasn't your fault. Noah knew his own mind." Beth's voice was soft and he looked up at her. She knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.

Beth knew Noah would have insisted on going. He was tough, she'd give him that. He must have been if Daryl had trusted him enough to let him go on a run. "How did you find him anyway?"

Daryl recounted the day he and Carol had met him, the day he'd found out for sure that Beth was alive. He'd been able to pepper the kid with questions on the way back to the church. He didn't like the sounds of those pricks at all. If he had his choice he would have gunned down every last son of a bitch in that hallway that day but Rick had just shaken his head at him. He guessed as he stared down at her lifeless body in his arms all the fight had just gone out of him and he stopped caring anymore.

And he had. He figured it was Judith and Carl that had kept him going for as long as he had. A future for them and a place they could grow up and be kids. Beth had tried to make things as normal as possible for the kids at the prison, holding arts and crafts in the dining area. He had brought her back various kinds of paper and glue and he remembered the bright smile she had flashed him way back then. It hadn't given him butterflies then. It was only when they'd escaped the prison together, fought against a world of dead side by side that he began to see Beth differently. That he thought she saw him differently too.

Daryl looked at where his and Beth's hands were joined. It seemed strange talking to her again, just like no time had passed but it was exactly what happened. She had just told him some of the strangest things he'd ever heard but then again when he considered that the dead roamed outside the walls of this city, he could maybe believe anything.

"You're gonna keep my secret right?" Beth's voice was soft and penetrated his thoughts about the whole situation.

He nodded quickly. "Secret's safe with me. We'll figure somethin' out."

"They knew I was different when my bruises healed in a matter of hours. When my bite kept healing itself up faster than they could treat it to make it grow back together right. It's why it looks like that." His heart broke at her thinking her scars made any inch of her skin any less perfect than it was.

"'S fine. We all got scars." He kept his covered for now. They could only deal with one thing at a time.

"So you don't think I'm a freak?" Beth would die if it changed his view of her in any way. Not that she knew what it was but she sure didn't mind the way he was looking at her now. Like she held the keys to the kingdom.

Daryl shook his head. "Don't think you're quite ready to be a side show at the circus."

Beth felt a giggle bubble up in her throat. She didn't know how he did it. Always making her laugh when there wasn't anything there to laugh at. "Maybe if I grow a beard."

"Maybe." He didn't move a muscle as she brought her hand up to the side of his face, holding her palm against it for a moment.

"Thank you." She breathed. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and he didn't breathe, didn't move, just savored the feeling as her soft lips ghosted over his skin, sure when she pulled her lips off of him and there was cool air between their warm skin again that he'd open his eyes and she'd be gone.

"For what?" His voice was barely audible, husky. He opened his eyes slowly, scared and then relieved that she was right there. That was replaced immediately by disbelief of another kind. Because he couldn't believe she trusted him, couldn't believe that he was her confidante but then if he looked back on what they were before he guessed that was fitting. He'd tell her all his secrets and then some. Eventually, he thought.

"For being you." Her reply was simple. Perfect. Just like her.

Just like that it was like no time had passed between them at all and she had never been taken. Maybe if they sat there just a little longer they could pretend they were at a different table, at a different time. Almost like a previous life. Where there was a girl and a boy and he'd said he changed his mind and she didn't know. That it was all because of her. She changed his mind about a lot of things. But mostly of how he saw himself. He knew one thing though that hadn't changed. How he'd protect her until his dying breath. Knowing what he knew now. What she just told him. Nothing and no one was separating them again. He'd die before he'd let that happen.

"Think everyone will be surprised to see me?" Beth's eyes cut to his as she said it absently at first and the grin slowly spread across her features and he was reminded of the one other time he had seen that expression of wonder and happiness on her face, excitement about something. It was different being happy in their world now so on the rare now and then that it happened, you tended to notice.

He shook his head and chuckled at her. "That's an understatement, girl." He stood up and pulled her with him. He'd wanted to reach down and help her up that night from the porch, but he'd been too chicken shit then. Thought maybe she'd see him as some kind of pussy whipped knight in shining armor. Funny how a little thing like death made you forget what you ever thought was important before. The stupid shit didn't matter. This living breathing girl, the fact that she still existed and that they were breathing the same air. That was everything.

He tugged her hand slightly as she hadn't made a move to let go of his anytime soon. He kept expecting her to drop it even as they got to the door and he pulled it open and held his hand up and went out ahead of her. It didn't matter if this place had walls; Daryl felt like danger could still lurk around every corner. The living had been far more dangerous to them in the recent past. Gareth. The Governor. Dawn. He shuddered involuntarily.

His main reason for general mistrust of others outside their circle called him from his dark thoughts. "Just so you know, I missed you too." He cut his eyes to hers as they made their way up the street to the two houses he and Rick and the others occupied.

He nodded and he couldn't help the upturn of his lips. She had missed him too. That had to mean something, right?

They approached the house where surely the others were all gathering for their evening meal together. He didn't know how the town grapevine had kept the news of Beth and Morgan's arrival but he was grateful that he'd been the first to see her, to get to talk to her. He didn't know what the next few minutes held but one thing was for sure, he'd take her secret to his grave. In fact, he'd prefer if no one ever found out about it. Some secrets were just made to be buried.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry this is so short but I have a specific way that is set up for this to be written. Hope you like where it is going at least. Things will calm down for a little while so Beth and Daryl can get to know one another again before things kind of go crazy so to speak. Just wanted to give you fair warning that this is not going to be one of those stories where everything is awesome and they are safe and all that. I do have other stories like that if you are interested. You guys are the best! Until next time, xoxoxo


	3. I Once Was Lost (But now I'm Found)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie and Beth finally reunite but it's not all that Beth imagined it would be.

Beth looked up at the two story Cape Cod style home and it felt foreign to her. Like she was going to someone's house she didn't even know. From what she saw on the walk over (and it was hard to keep from watching Daryl watching her so she was not able to see much) people were doing well. She observed well kept lawns and she almost fell over when she saw someone walking their dog. She wondered if Daryl thought of the dog back at the funeral home. She couldn't keep the frown from her face when she remembered that night. The night she was taken from him. The night she was bit by one of the undead.

"Hey." His voice was soft but gruff from beside her on the sidewalk, breaking her from her thoughts. He waited until she looked at him before he finished. "It's gonna be okay."

She forced a half smile. "How can you be so sure?"

"This little spitfire once told me that I had to have a little faith." Daryl's eyes pierced her own and she caught his hidden message. At once she had a memory of green grass and his worn bandana, late summer sun beating down on her head and her and Daryl setting out to conquer the undead world. She smiled at him, grateful that he remembered.

Daryl's heart flip-flopped in his chest when she smiled at her own advice being given back to her. It made that same jump every time she smiled his direction. At this rate, he was headed for a heart attack, but he figured his heart had already taken a hell of a thrashing here lately and could likely handle it.

"What do I say though?" She looked up at him, her eyes a deep ocean of stormy blues dancing with a spark of light. "Hey Maggie. I'm alive?"

"I'll go in first and smooth it out for you if ya want." Daryl offered. It was the least he could do he figured. She just shook her head.

"No, I gotta do this." Daryl was reminded instantly of her face set in a fierce determination telling him that all she wanted to do that day was to lay down and cry. But we don't get to do that. He hadn't understood it at the time, her bizarre need to get lit after what they had seen. He could understand the why but he couldn't understand the when or the how. He had never seen anyone so determined to get to something. And he'd never seen someone cry so hard at finally finding it and it not being what they thought it was. Beth had treated finding that drink like finding the holy grail and when it came down to it, it was a huge disappointment. Which with Peach Schnapps, it _was_ that.

Daryl figured that was what finding this place had meant to Rick. To Michonne. To all of them really. They had come looking for the holy grail and all they'd found when they got here was Peach Schnapps. He squeezed her hand that he kept expecting her to withdraw any minute, but she didn't. "Ready?"

She gave him a small smile and nodded, squeezing his hand back. It was strange in some ways and in others it was just natural that she and Daryl had reconnected so quickly. Here she was holding Daryl Dixon's hand like it was nothing.

They climbed the steps to the porch and Daryl eased the door open looking to her once and connecting with her eyes. She nodded back at him. It was time.

Daryl stepped through the door first, their fingers still intertwined. He probably should care what the others would think about this physical contact but he couldn't bring himself to. It was none of their business. Besides Rick knew what he had lost in the hospital hallway that day. Figured Maggie did too. Still thinking about it and seeing it playing out was two different things in his book. And still he didn't care. Beth was alive and she needed him. He wasn't going to pussy out of some hand holding even if his ears were red when they entered the front room.

Everyone's reaction was different, but the first chorus of shocked gasps hit his ears and he felt Beth move closer to him. He tightened his grip on her fingers to let her know that he was there. He heard her breathing from beside him and it was a bit faster than he would have liked.

Beth didn't know how Maggie would react when she saw she was alive. She expected tears, stunned silence, or maybe hysteria but she definitely did not expect her sister to crumple to the floor like a rag doll, unconscious.

"Maggie!" Glenn was crouched down beside her in an instant, pulling her head into his lap. Her eyelids fluttered a bit and Beth could only stare.

If she was shocked by Maggie's reaction, she was absolutely stunned by her own reaction at seeing her sister again. She felt oddly detached from the moment. She couldn't place the feeling exactly. It wasn't that she was angry at Maggie. Yes, it hurt that she had looked for Glenn and had given her up for dead or worse, but she didn't harbor resentment towards her sister. She studied Glenn as he fawned over Maggie, holding her head in his lap on the floor. Her sister opened her eyes. "Beth." Her voice was a hoarse whisper and Beth just watched as Maggie was helped to her feet by Glenn and a brunette. She stood stock still and took in the sounds around her. Maggie was coming towards her and holding her arms out. She heard someone crying; she thought it was Carl. That snapped her back to herself. She heard a baby and she didn't have time to process that it was Judith before Maggie was enveloping her in a hug and Beth should have let go of Daryl's hand. She should have but she didn't want to.

She caught the curious gaze of the brunette whose eyes slid back in place as Beth caught her looking at hers and Daryl's linked fingers. Beth wasn't letting go. Not anytime soon. Maybe not ever. She knew it was ridiculous to have survived everything she had out there beyond the walls but here inside? She felt as afraid and vulnerable as ever.

Maggie pulled back to look at her. "You're alive". The sentence was half question and half statement. She was grinning at Beth and it was that moment that she realized that her sister was pregnant. The soft swell of her belly beneath her shirt was apparent.

"You're pregnant?" Beth stepped back and it was an echo of an earlier conversation, an earlier lifetime when she had expressed the same incredulity as then with Lori. Bringing a baby into this world was a risk. For the baby. For the mother. Gradually over the past year she had come to understand that sometimes things happened that you didn't plan for and they ended up being the best thing ever. Judith had always been a bright spot. She remembered Lori again and wanted to cry. She had been almost like a mother to Beth and maybe she'd know what to do with this mess.

Maggie was pregnant and by the looks of it, she was pretty far along. Far enough that she had probably gotten pregnant at the prison. She had a flash of a memory of Glenn going to hunt for something on a run. She had been convinced at the time that it was a pregnancy test, which was something that she talked to Daryl about on that porch.

That they could have babies for their Dad to be a grandpa and they could have birthdays and summer picnics. That was a silly notion for an even sillier girl. That was all before, when she thought they would be okay. Before she was taken by the Grady cops. Before Dawn. Before O'Donnell. She couldn't quite banish the thought before it slipped into the forefront of her mind. _Before Gorman_. She shook her head of the eternal cobwebs and forced yet another smile at her sister, careful to keep her eyes above her waist where the obvious swell of her belly jutted out. A flash of something Beth was just beginning to get familiar with ripped through her. She got it now. She got it and the calm she had been feeling was starting to slip away and uneasiness was taking its place.

Everyone gathered around her then and she forced herself to just breathe while she accepted hugs and tried to return them. Daryl had finally had to release her hand and without it she felt a little lost and she couldn't quite make sense of that. She had made it all the way here without him hadn't she? So why then did she feel so desolate without the warm of his skin against hers.

It was Rick's turn and he embraced her and she felt his breath warm on her cheek as he kissed her gently. "It's good to have ya back, Beth." She murmured something back to him because all that was in her mind at the moment was him kissing her on the cheek in that hallway and then everything went blurry for her there. She could hear Daryl's voice beside her but she couldn't make sense of it.

There were a thousand questions that she couldn't answer and even more questions behind all their eyes. And things got even blurrier. She felt like she was in a tunnel and could barely see out the other side.

They all gathered in the kitchen and dining area, people scattered here and there with plates of some kind of stew. Beth declined any. She had started feeling nauseous with the unknown emotion that had taken hold of her.

Daryl's voice from beside her turned her head towards him, like he was her last beacon of hope in this dark tunnel. "You okay?"

Her eyes met his and she knew he saw it; the pain, the fear, the rising panic that she couldn't fight if she wanted to. Something about being safe was chipping away the hard exterior she had built around herself. She had erected a shield when she left that hospital for the last time and now that she was back with family, inside walls, relatively safe from the monsters that roamed the earth, a different kind of monster was beckoning their call and she was nearly helpless to answer.

He could hardly stand watching her right now. She was not the same Beth he knew but how could she be. After what she went through, it was bound to change her. He didn't know how to help her so he did the only thing he could. What he had so long ago when the sadness slipped into place on her features, when she was remembering something painful. They had taken a seat on the sofa after Maggie had finally been led off, crying happy tears, by Glenn. He didn't bother to check to see if anyone was watching because he didn't care. This was Beth and she was hurting. He moved his hand carefully over and slid his palm into hers. Their fingers slid together like they were pieces of a puzzle meant to fit and they did. She looked up at him gratefully and he knew he had to get her out of there. It was too much for her and he could tell she was suffering. He could feel eyes on him and he met Rick's from across the room. He had Judy, bouncing her on his hip. A silent message passed between them. Sometimes he thought his brother saw way more than he let on in his group.

He leaned over to make sure she could hear him over the happy din of their family, rejoicing in the one lost from their pack. "It's nice out on the porch."

Beth looked up at him where she felt so lost and locked inside herself and just nodded at him. She couldn't form thoughts right now, let alone words. She watched him get up from the sofa and he turned slightly towards her and pulled her to her feet and she couldn't process everything at the moment but the one thing she felt as they walked through the door they had entered not ten minutes ago, she felt calm slipping back into place. She took a deep breath.

Daryl led her around to the back side of the porch, away from windows and prying eyes. Beth slid herself to the hard plank boards, finished of course because this was a nice neighborhood they were living in. She rested her back against the house and waited for Daryl to sit down beside her on her left. She looked over at him as he settled, his thigh warm against hers, and he looked like he wanted to say something and in the dim of dusk she could barely make out his pupils where they caught the light.

"Thank you." She whispered. She knew she didn't have to clarify. He knew. She couldn't have sat one more minute in there and it made her almost panic thinking about where she was going to sleep tonight. She had imagined all the way here that she would settle in wherever Maggie was and now that she was here she couldn't help the feeling of loss that had come over her. She hadn't expected to feel this way towards her sister.

Daryl knew she needed to unload her mind and she would. He just waited. She looked out into the darkening night. "This place looks too good to be true."

He looked at her. She was sharp, his girl. _His girl_? He wasn't sure he could lay claim on her like that. He wanted to though. It felt somehow right, yet he still wasn't sure how she felt by his revelation in that kitchen. He didn't have to wonder if she knew what he meant. The look of dawning realization in her eyes and her 'oh' had told him all he needed to know. "Mmm, I thought so too at first. I didn't sleep inside for the first week." He looked at her and his eyes held an amused glint because he knew she'd get it.

Beth looked at him and studied him for a minute. "What made ya go inside finally?" She liked the teasing glint in his eyes. It reminded her of the last time they'd sat out on a porch, just the two of them.

"Carol." Beth nodded. She had been waiting for him to bring her up. Aaron had told her about how Carol had been accidentally shot by Sasha during a fight against a herd. Carol had been coming back from a perimeter check when the herd hit and she had been killed by friendly fire. The loss of Carol had been impacted even further when Sasha had taken her own life later that night.

Daryl continued. "She told me if I didn't get my ass in the house and take a shower like the rest of them she'd turn the garden hose on me." He smirked at her, even as he felt the tears prick behind his eyelids. He missed his friend who'd kept him in line.

"That's all it took?" Beth smiled at him lost in his memory of his friend and she wanted to reach out and wipe his tears away but she settled instead for reaching over and taking his hand that rested on his outstretched legs. It felt odd and comforting at the same time, Beth's hands resting against Daryl's thigh, close to where their legs were already touching. She released a breath and it finally felt like she could breathe again.

Daryl shook his head at her question and smirked. "Nah. That weren't enough. About a day after that, I was sittin' out here and she came and dumped a big bucket of water on my head."

Beth couldn't help the giggle that slipped past her lips at the picture that presented in her mind. "Oh I bet you were mad."

Daryl nodded. "Mmhmm." He chuckled low and telling the story, bringing up Carol even though it hurt, was worth it to see her smile. To hear that fine tinkling laughter that was so rare in their world now. "Madder than a hornet. But she was right. I needed to do somethin'. I was just kinda-." He didn't know how to describe the empty feeling he'd had on getting here and finding a place where they could just 'be', but Beth wasn't with them.

"Lost?" Beth finished his thought for him. She squeezed his hand. She knew that was all that was needed to convey her sympathy.

Daryl's eyes snapped to hers and he knew she got him. Knew she understood that it was because of her he was feeling that way. He nodded. "Don't feel that way now though."

Beth's breath hitched in her chest at his words and at what they could mean and she knew somehow that he was talking about her. He was telling her in his own way that he was glad she was there. He was happy to be back with her just like she was him. It was like they'd never been apart. "Me either." She whispered and she didn't know if it was right or proper and she didn't much care because all she had to do was lean slightly to her left and her head rested against his shoulder. She thought she might have imagined the quiet sigh she heard coming from his lips and she thought she imagined the way he slightly leaned into her too. But one thing she didn't imagine was the way his lips ghosted across the side of her forehead, right over the place where the bullet had ripped through her skull. Daryl Dixon had kissed her forehead. She smiled to herself. She didn't know what the next moment held but in this moment, she was fine. She was home.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know how you like this story so far. xoxoxo


	4. Wild Like a Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth has trouble adjusting to life in the Safe Zone.

In the end, she'd ended up staying with Glenn and Maggie. Morgan was sleeping on the sofa downstairs and Beth had made her new home in the small guest bedroom. A narrow twin bed, utilitarian but Beth was beyond caring about such things now. It had a desk and Beth figured that might prove more useful than anything if she ever got a chance to write again.

Beth tossed and turned and flipped over for the fourth time in as many minutes and began to feel like she was wrapped in a cocoon. It felt oddly similar to when she was in the hospital, waking up for the second time, more scars than the first time and all the white walls, white noise, white skin, white hands that reached for her, white teeth that bared and bit and chewed. Her left hand flew to her other arm, felt for the tell, the raised areas on her skin and the places it puckered.

She couldn't make sense of what was happening inside her own head, maybe it was finally giving out. She was in a safe zone now. Then why did she feel like she was about to crawl out of her own skin, like if somehow if she scratched at the surface enough that she could burrow her way out? But where would she be then? Where would she end up? _Back at the farm_ , she thought. A little girl's wish still lived somewhere in there.

She kicked her legs and threw the covers off and sat on the side of the bed, working at controlling her breathing. She had to get out now. Her flight or fight response took over in that moment and her pulse thundered in her ears, deafening, and she was running and her lungs burned with the force of her flight and the next thing she knew she was standing in the middle of the street outside Maggie and Glenn's house. She knew that's where she was but as she collapsed to the asphalt, the pain in her knees a dull signal in the back of her mind, she didn't know where else she was. She could have been anywhere and still feel as lost as she did right now. Maybe even back at the farm she'd still be this lost little wolf pup. Finally home, finally back in the safety of the den but still alone. Still in danger. The fear hammered inside of her like it needed out.

Her thoughts were fragmented like she was looking through a prism to the distorted shards of a green lollipop, sharp like glass, and a white cast and so much red, red blood she could taste the copper in her mouth. Her senses were distorted again and the grip on her heart became too much to bear and somewhere beyond her she heard a wolf. Howling. And then she realized that it was her. _She was the wolf._ A mighty fierce she-wolf and like a shapeshifter, her heart was beating against its cage wildly, ready to burst forth and claim its mate. Never knowing when it was coming, she felt the arms. She felt them and her howling finally ceased.

She was assaulted by the scent of leather, musk, and thick callused hands that hitched behind her legs and scooped her into their arms, so warm, and the heartbeat was soothing and familiar. _Right_. Daryl. It was Daryl. They were back on the sidewalk again and she wanted to be anywhere but there. Back at Maggie's. "Please." Her voice didn't sound like hers and she was just broken in that moment and more than anything she hated herself. Hated herself for being weak, for letting anyone see her this way. She didn't understand it. She had made it all the way here. Alone. Well, okay so mostly alone, but still. She'd made it without him and yet now here she was and she felt she'd float away without him anchoring her here.

* * *

Daryl didn't know what to make of the noise, wailing like the undead in the middle of the street but he'd been out walking. He couldn't sleep. Somehow knowing that Beth was there within his grasp but yet not was too much and he felt suffocated by the walls of the safe zone, the walls of the house and finally even the walls inside his mind became too much for him to bear and he just got up and grabbed his bow, intending to slip out the gates and go hunt. Didn't matter none if it was a boar or a walker at this point. He had a raw, endless nervous energy and he was drawn by some inexplicable force. His Aaron and Eric's house was around the corner from Maggie and Glenn's house; now Beth's house too, but it wouldn't take long for him to circle the block, just to make sure.

He was still half a block away when he heard the banshee cry, like a wolf and he glanced up to be certain that he hadn't missed a full moon and he had a thousand thoughts but something in that cry pulled at him in a way he couldn't explain. The sound was nothing like a human. It was feral. But at the same time he knew it had everything to do with Beth. He found himself at a bolt, his bow hitting his back since he hadn't had time to strap it down properly.

As he approached the intersection, he was stricken by the sight of her. Her blonde hair spilling down around her shoulders, her head tipped back to the sky as her strangled cry finally died. He was beside her before he had time to process his thoughts. Should he go to her or let her sister who was coming down the steps and it was as if some voice within him told him that it had to be him. _She needs you_ , the voice beckoned. She was like some wild thing, some fallen angel mired in the dark of their world and it pulled on a place within him he didn't know existed.

He approached her as he would a wounded animal and it was like an instinct took over. She was his to protect and he thought that maybe she always had been. He bent down in the middle of the road, neighbors gathered, scattered on the sidewalks surrounding the intersection, and scooped her up into his arms and he had to swallow hard to keep from remembering another time he had carried her that way.

_Her weight, dead as yesterday as he carried her out of that hospital to Maggie like some twisted offering, his very heart on a platter, and yet she seemed to weigh nothing and he remembered his words, from another time he had carried her this way wishing he could yank them back, "You're heavier than ya look."_

His hands smoothed over her hair and he whispered things to her that didn't make sense even to him and he heard her cry, pleading. "Please." And he knew. She wanted to be out of prying eyes.

"I'm just gonna take her back to my place. Get her calmed down." Maggie stood on the sidewalk, her hands over her belly, Glenn had his hands on her shoulders. Morgan had walked out from their house; he was staying too until things got settled with his housing.

It was his voice that seemed to have the answer as to what was going on here. "It happens to her sometimes. The trip was hard on her. She wasn't well enough to leave the hospital but she insisted. Then once Aaron found us, she was like, like a force."

Daryl nodded. That sounded exactly like Beth. Except for the part where she runs out screaming into the night like the very devil was after her. Her sobbing had subsided to hiccups and she suddenly shifted in his arms, her feet begging for purchase again as he let her slide to the ground. "I'm okay." She sounded anything but he took her cue, her body language was telling him more than her words. He took small comfort in the fact that her shaking had reduced to a fine tremor now and then instead of the damn near convulsions she seemed to be in when he first picked her up from the ground.

Beth couldn't explain how everything sort of clicked back into place in her mind once Daryl was near her. It was like he was a talisman from the bad that threatened to swamp her and for whatever reason if he wasn't nearby, it seemed to be worse. Now that he was beside her she felt strong. It comforted her as much as it perplexed her and she would be lying if she didn't admit to a bit of annoyance that she was dependent on anyone at all. Even if it was Daryl. And yet at the same time, it felt like maybe he needed her too. She turned as Daryl set her down on the sidewalk and faced her sister. "I'm just gonna go with Daryl for tonight."

Maggie just nodded and Beth was grateful. The action didn't reach her sister's eyes. She could read the confusion there but as Maggie's eyes slid to Daryl's they exchanged a look and it was like they both knew something she didn't and it had everything to do with her. She didn't have to guess about it. She knew it had to do with Daryl's tells earlier in the evening. How he'd missed her. How he felt less lost without her. Those were the things she held onto now as she turned back to Daryl after offering up the best smile she could muster (by the looks on Maggie's face it was paltry) to her flesh and blood who watched her leave.

She slid close to him as he nodded to Morgan and then Glenn and the crowd had already broken up on the sidewalk by then. "Aaron and Eric are pretty cool. We play our cards right, Eric might make us pancakes in the morning."

Beth looked up at him in surprise and she swore in that moment, she couldn't have made a sharper 180 degree turn in her outlook in life and she felt a swell of something towards Daryl, something unnamed, but it was somehow good. Just good. Just moments ago she was howling like a she wolf into the night and now there was a bubbling sort of laughter that slipped past her lips at the sheer simplicity that there was still a world where it was possible they could have pancakes.

Daryl looked at her as they walked along and she hadn't left his side. It made the going slow as they finally approached the porch but it was fine with him. He'd had tougher journeys than the one now with Beth Greene's arm wrapped around his middle and laughter that seemed to reach straight inside him and awaken something in him he didn't even know was sleeping. But it felt a little like happiness.

Her hands stopped him before he twisted the knob to go inside. "Do you mind if we just sit outside for a bit?"

He nodded because what would it serve to refuse her. He thought back on his first night here in this place and how everyone had reveled in being able to sleep inside, safe, showered, tucked in like children on Christmas Eve but the likes of Daryl Dixon had never been privy to that fairy tale kind of shit. It's why he'd slept outside. Being outside like a cat had made him feel more at home and maybe that's what Beth needed too.

He settled them on the big lounge thing that Aaron said he had scavenged on one of their runs last month. He'd insisted on it. He said it was very outdoor chic but Daryl just thought it looked like an outdoor bed that could get wet and wouldn't be ruined. It was under the cover of the wide porch so it didn't matter and Eric had even brought out several decorative pillows and quilts. He gestured to it now and Beth looked at him, a grin flitting across her features and an image slipped into place, a memory of a slip of a little blonde girl handing him a jar or moonshine. _"You my chaperone now, Mr. Dixon."_ Why that slipped itself in now, he didn't know but he liked how it made him feel. _Here._ Another memory slipped in sideways, the way her eyes had lit up when she'd told him she wished they could have summer picnics and birthdays. And how they had to let the past go so it wouldn't kill them. _Here_. And now here they were, cozying up together. "It's a porch bed."

Beth looked at Daryl from where she had settled back against the cushions. She turned sideways to looked at him, surveying the way his bangs kept slipping past his brows, even worse than she remembered, but somehow it still endeared her to him. "You have a way with words, _Mr. Dixon_."

There it was that teasing lilt and that was the old Beth he remembered, full of sass and promise but she'd kick your ass into tomorrow if you didn't watch your step. There was no malice in her words. She didn't mean it to tease. At least not like that. He thought maybe for a minute she might be flirting. _Mr. Dixon._ Again he was assaulted by that memory and he was wondering if this was what it was always going to be like being next to Beth. A series of memories, strung together on instances and everything their eyes said that they didn't say to one another. He thought maybe she might be just as guilty.

As if to disprove him her words came at him from right beside him and he didn't think he imagined that he felt her breath ghost across the skin of his arm where it was propped just above where her head rested on the pillows behind her head. All he'd have to do is shift his hand just slightly and so he did and then his finger had woven themselves in her hair right on top of her head, smoothing it back and he had no idea what he was doing.

The strangest thing happened when Daryl touched her head, his fingers weaving through her head like he was weaving himself into the very heart of her. It's too late was her unbidden thought. She suddenly imagined a million other moments his skin would brush against hers, so innocent, yet so full of promise and she'd feel exactly thus. That she was just _caught_.

"Do you ever feel like we're caught up in time?" Her voice was soft and the ease of her twang did much to soothe his starved ears. Starved for her voice, he knew. Even if he didn't understand what she meant by that statement he knew she was getting ready to explain it and he studied her as she contemplated all manner of things. That's the way it was with Beth Greene, always trying to figure stuff out.

She looked into Daryl's eyes and she saw the questions there and her answers seemed to want to burn their way out of her but she had to be patient. Being caught as they were, time was suspended and all the more reason to make sure they made it all count. She looked at him and thought maybe he understood.

"I think so. When you were gone, it felt like time stopped for me." Maybe he'd said too much and maybe then again he didn't. Because the dawning realization in her eyes sparked something there and he hadn't seen it, he thought, since her " _Oh_ ".

Beth threw caution to the wind and reached down and caught Daryl's hand in her own. Maybe she was still drunk on the dreamlike state she was in when he found her howling like a wild animal in the middle of the road. Maybe it was that or maybe it was something else that made her bring his hand up against her chest, their fingers intertwined.

"Here. I'm caught here." She pressed their hands down just above her breast, just above her heart lay beating, wildly, rapidly. It was true. It was like she was caught in all the places at once in time. Her breath was caught in her throat and it had everything to do with how he was clenching her hand as her heart caught in her chest, seeming like it was trying to will itself to beat in a proper rhythm. It seemed as she looked into Daryl's eyes and he into hers that they were somehow caught. Caught together. Like they were suspended in time, standing still in each other's presence, like they were the only thing that mattered. And really and truly they were.

Daryl never took his eyes from hers, those unwavering baby blues that seemed to see all his tells even the ones he didn't know he had because she might be the one that put them there. Oh hell yes, he was caught. "Me too." Two words. It was so much more than he ever thought he'd be able to say to her and there was so much he still needed to tell her. Needed to say to her but right now, in the warmth of her gaze and the small smile that slipped into place as she kept her hand tucked into his and both of them tucked into her chest, her heart beating beneath both their hands, it was enough. That they understood that words weren't needed. Not for them. Not yet anyway. Right now, they could stay caught. In the moment. A place out of time and a time out of place. Right now, there was no place on earth he'd rather be than caught up in this thing. She tucked herself against him and though it was a long time before either one of them slept they were content to stay just as they were. Caught up in each other.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think in the comments, xoxoxo


	5. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth has a visit with the doctor and Maggie sees her arm. Can Darylhelp her keep her secret?

He sat there looking at Beth where they waited outside the doctor's office not quite believing what she had just asked of him and yet he'd thought of it himself and hell he just hated himself. He didn't hate himself so much for wanting to be with her when the doctor examined her, it was for the thoughts that followed after that. Because he'd never thought of Beth that way. Not when he was with her before and it had just been the two of them. Not when she'd been 'just gone'. Not even when he thought he'd found her. He'd never let his mind go there for even a second, because it wouldn't have done him any good. Then _after_. Well, after he just tried not let his mind go anywhere at all because it hurt too fucking much. After a while he had thought he was going to go crazy like Rick had after Lori died. Because everywhere he looked he saw her. He saw her face in reflections in the windows through Alexandria. It got so bad that he saw her face on every walker he killed. Pretty soon, every single undead thing that came at him reminded him of Beth in some way.

But now? Her request seemed simple. Except it wasn't. "I want you to go in there with me." She nodded her head in the direction of the exam room.

Daryl's thoughts went back to his own examination where Pete had wanted him to wear one of the stupid paper gowns and all he could think was how some asshole was gonna be asking him where the marks on his back came from and he stormed out and gotten himself another day of respite from the bullshit inside the walls and wishing he'd never come through the gate anyways.

Now here he was. And here Beth was sitting with him and he still had a hard time processing that. She was alive. He stared at her unblinking, processing her request, and willing his mind to not to go there, thinking about her and all her feminine curves under some stupid unattractive paper gown and it set his mind to thinking how she'd look just as sexy in that paper gown as she would any fabric in the world and that was where the problem was.

It wasn't even as if he'd never seen more of her curves than either of them thought he would. He had. And she'd probably seen more of him than she cared to admit. It had been just the two of them after all for a long time and he thought of the times he'd had to stand guard while she took care of business, bathed, and the whole nine. He was probably more intimately familiar with her body than he should be and fuck it all, he wished he wasn't because ever since she got here it seemed like they were straining for something or against something and he wasn't sure what it was just yet but he knew it had everything to do with where they were right now, this impasse. It was like his mind couldn't separate the two anymore. The before when it was just the two of them, before her ' _oh'_ , and the now when they were surrounded by their friends and family and things were so fucking complicated. Well this was the after and he just wasn't sure where they were supposed to go from here. He didn't think she did either, though she hadn't said.

He knew why she wanted him there. She didn't want to be alone. She was scared and he couldn't blame her. She also was staring at him now, waiting for him to answer her and she knew. He looked at the fire in her cheeks and the way she was studying him and he could tell that she knew where his mind was at the moment and yet she didn't look away. She was almost challenging him and he wondered if they were still contemplating the exam room or if it was something else and he just couldn't go there right now.

He cleared his throat and looked at her for a beat longer before nodding. "Okay." He'd made her a promise after all. He wasn't going to tell anyone her secret. But he'd made himself one too. No one would hurt her again and if that meant he had to suck it up and think about puppies and grandmothers and hell, walkers if he had to while she was getting that examination then so be it.

"It's not like you haven't seen me Daryl." Her voice was a whisper even though it was just the two of them. And he remembered the last time he had seen her half dressed was after they had burned down that shack. They'd both been covered in soot and walker guts and if either one of them was cleaner than the other, well you couldn't tell. That went double for how they both smelled. So when they'd come upon the clear stream way out the woods, she'd looked back at him, her smile lighting up that Georgia forest, he'd nodded and she'd stripped down to her skivvies while he stood watch.

Her voice brought him out of his memory. "I just don't want to be alone. I don't know him either."

Beth watched Daryl as she spoke. She was referring to Pete, the doctor. She didn't know him and while he was most likely a professional and would keep things thus, she didn't trust anyone. Not after the hospital. She didn't say anything to Daryl. Didn't mention Gorman and the other cops at Grady. This wasn't the time to go into that. She wasn't even sure she wanted anyone to know about it. Not yet anyway.

The door to the clinic opened and Beth stood up. She knew she was being ridiculous but she felt like she was going to battle. Maybe it was because that's all any of them were used to anymore.

Daryl thought about what she said as they followed Pete into the ante-room off the main room which housed an exam table and a couple of gurneys pushed against one wall. He thought about what Beth said. That she didn't trust him and Daryl thought he'd never really trusted him either but he figured that was because he could smell the vodka on him. And it reminded him of his old man.

He looked at Daryl and he knew the man was remembering how Daryl had refused to wear his stupid paper gown but he handed Beth one nonetheless. "You can leave on your underthings. You can come wait out here with me Mr. Dixon. Give the lady her privacy."

"He's stayin'." Beth's voice rang out in the small room and they both looked at her.

Pete looked at Daryl. "She asked me to stay with her. I'm stayin'." He reiterated Beth's words and Pete nodded wordlessly. If the man thought it odd that he, an old redneck was associated with a pretty young girl woman like Beth, he didn't let on. Good, Daryl thought. If he knew what was good for him he'd keep it that way.

Pete turned before shutting the door. "I'll be back in a couple minutes then."

Daryl turned to Beth and she offered him a small smile. "Paper gowns, they're all the rage in the apocalypse." She quipped as she held it up.

He snorted. "Right up there with potato sacks." Fucking hell, he figured she'd look good in one of those too. It would be just his luck.

She stood there with the gown for a second and he felt like the biggest idiot because of course she wanted him to turn around so she could put the stupid thing on. "Sorry, just tell me when you're done." He turned to face the door and wished he had the ability to kick himself. Just because he'd seen her half naked didn't mean she wanted to strip for him. He cursed himself for the thought and bit back a groan as he listened to her unzip her jeans and slid them off her body. What the hell was wrong with him? _This was Beth._

He knew they were going towards this at some point but he didn't think his mind would go there this soon. He had always thought himself above that sort of thing and had always kind of looked down on Merle for always having his mind in the gutter and here he was thinking about Beth in all the ways he shouldn't and all the ways he didn't even know he could and it just hit him all at once that he really did want her _in that way._

He heard the paper rustle behind him and heard the creak of metal and knew she had just climbed onto the exam table. "You can turn around now."

He only hesitated for a minute and he hoped she didn't see the way he had to take a calming breath before doing so. Holy god in heaven he wasn't prepared for seeing her like that. Her milky skin so pale against the slate blue gown and he tried so hard not to stare, but her hair was spilling over her shoulders in waves and her legs stuck out from that stupid paper gown and they seemed to go on fucking forever. Her baby blues drew him in and as he looked at her, a picture of ethereal beauty, and he was lost like he usually was when he got taken up with her. But never like this. Not with this intensity.

"How do I look?" The rustling of the paper as her arms moved was the only sound in the room. She grinned at him and there was a swell in his chest that made him feel like he was going to burst.

It wasn't what he meant to say but it came out anyway. "Beautiful."

Beth's sharp intake of breath couldn't be mistaken as anything other than quiet surprise at Daryl's admission and she was struck then by how breathless she felt at his one uttered word. She stared at him and she waited for him to take it back or to hem and haw and shuffle his feet in true Daryl fashion but it was like they were caught again. In a place out of time. And he held her gaze.

"Thank you." She smiled at him then and he smiled back. Daryl Dixon smiled back and it was the most genuine thing. It seemed silly that this was happening now under these circumstances but life was like that sometimes she thought. Sometimes you didn't get all the hearts and flowers moments when you wanted them. Sometimes you got them in an examination room in a makeshift clinic in the middle of the end of the world. Sometimes it was in a kitchen of a funeral home where you realized that everything you thought you knew about a person could be tied up in one phrase that you thought meant nothing but really, it meant everything.

_What changed your mind?_

She knew it was her. And he'd been so brave then, just looking at her and telling her that it was her that changed his mind about good people. She'd been surprised then.

But now? Him telling her that she was beautiful? It shouldn't surprise her that he was being brave again. Telling her things. She felt beautiful when he looked at her. Sometimes she thought he looked at her like a man should look at a woman and it made her heart skip a beat thinking that this was _Daryl Dixon_ looking at her thus.

They were both interrupted from exploring this new vein in their relationship any further as the doctor was back and so was the tension across Beth's neck and shoulders. She sat up a little straighter and forced a smile on her face, her hand going to her arm out of some innate reflex, protecting her secret. Her fingers smoothed over the gnarled flesh that got a bit better every day but still wasn't quite healed.

"This won't take long and it won't hurt I promise." He laughed a little at his own joke and Beth forced that same smile again and willed herself to not panic.

Daryl sensed the change in her immediately. Her back went ramrod stiff and she was on high alert, much like she had been so often in their time together. His eyes met hers and it was almost as if she willed him to step closer to her where she sat waiting. Her expression was one of gratitude as he stood to her right at the top of the exam table.

"How old are you Beth?" Pete asked.

"I'm nineteen." She'd had her 19th birthday sometime at Grady. The day had passed and she had only remembered it later. It had made feel even more stupid for thinking they could have ever had birthdays and summer picnics at the prison. It was hard to have a party when you didn't even remember your own birthday, she thought cryptically.

Pete nodded. "Are you having normal cycles?"

Beth only hesitated for a moment before shaking her head. She didn't know why she was so embarrassed. It wasn't like Daryl was completely oblivious to that sort of thing. Once while they were together on their own, they'd had to scout for tampons because hers had come out of the blue. She had only had a period twice since.

"Do you have headaches or dizzy spells since your accident?" She'd known that was coming at least.

"Yes, sometimes though not as often as I used to." She answered and hoped that was enough. She really didn't want to talk about it.

Pete didn't ask any more questions and proceeded with the exam. He placed the stethoscope to her chest and listened to her heart and lungs. His exam was perfunctory and he was completely professional. "What's this from?" His gaze was fixed on Beth's arm.

Her heart began to pound rapidly and she was surprised when Daryl spoke from beside her. "Dog bite. From a few months back." She looked to him and he glanced at her. "Shouldn'ta fed that mutt." His expression was wary as he looked at Pete but as soon as Pete nodded at Daryl and went to note it on the chart, Daryl winked at her.

She couldn't suppress a tiny smile as she tried to force her thoughts elsewhere, thinking past this appointment and past this clinic to when they could be back outside and it didn't feel so constricting, like she was suffocating.

Pete reached back up to her arm. "May I?" Beth nodded and just watched as his fingers gently probed the wound. "They operated at this hospital you were at?"

Beth nodded. "They tried. They opened it up a couple of times and cleaned the wound of all the dead tissue and stitched it back up." That part was completely true. Long after they figured out she was immune, she still required treatments on her arm. It had been a source of contention between her and Dawn. She hadn't wanted to eat their food but in the end she'd had to. She needed the protein to heal.

"You're lucky Miss Greene. Dog bites can be nasty. It doesn't look infected now."

He stepped to the scales across the room. "Last thing. You mind if I get a height and weight on you?"

Beth shook her head and before she could move to get down Daryl's hand was there in front of her and she placed her palm in his as she looked at him, helping her down from the table. His hand was warm, clasping hers and all too soon she was steady on her feet and he released her so she could walk to the scales. She knew the gown was gaping a bit in the back and her ass was hanging out and she was torn between wanting to pull it closed and just ignoring it. In the end she ignored it because it would be awkward to try to hold the gown closed and get an accurate weight.

She winced at the weight that showed up and waited while he adjusted the attached measuring stick to document her height. She had lost weight and though he wouldn't know that, he could probably tell by looking at her that she had. He jotted a couple of things down on his paper and Beth was very aware of Daryl and where his eyes were likely planted. She couldn't help it and well, it kind of turned her on. She didn't know why that surprised her. This was where this going wasn't it? Again she was struck with a sense of absurdity that this was happening now and how it was all playing out.

Daryl subconsciously reached for the exam table to steady him as she walked away from him, hips sashaying in that paper gown like she was on some goddamn runway and fucking hell, her gown gaped open and the sight of her perfect ass in her perfect pink panties did nothing to squelch the growing feeling that he was in way over his head here. He was not just in over his head. He was fucked.

The drunken doctor's voice was droning on. "However you're most likely malnourished." He walked over to the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle handing it to Beth.

Beth fought the urge to laugh as she looked at it. "Flintstones?"

He smiled at her. "Yeah, the group went on a run a few months back. Found a bunch of vitamins and lucky for me, three cases of booze." He seemed proud of that last fact and it grated her nerves for some reason and she just couldn't shake the feeling that she couldn't trust him. "Take two of those a day and you should be fine. If that wound starts to look infected again, you come back and I'll see if I can scare up some antibiotics."

He looked at her face and she was grateful he hadn't mentioned her facial scars. Dealing with her arm was more than enough to get her anxiety going.

He moved to go to the door. "We're done?" Pete looked back at her and Daryl and nodded.

"You're free to go. Deanna will be in touch about your interview." Beth nodded. Daryl had filled her in on the interview process. He had told her not to be worried and she wasn't.

The door closed and Beth walked back over to the exam table and looked at Daryl then leaned over to pick up her pants from the shelf beside it. As she met his gaze she realized his eyes were darker than usual and as she used her free hand to touch his arm that was still resting on the exam table, she identified the emotion in his eyes that she had never seen there before. She realized with a start that it was desire. He wanted her. And holy hell, she realized with just as much surprise, she wanted him too. He was close. So close that she could feel his breath and all she would have to do is lean but the paper gown rustled again and she then did the stupidest thing she could do in this moment. Open her damn mouth.

"Thank you".

She looked like a goddess coming back across the room to him and he could pretend that that paper gown wasn't between them. He could pretend a lot of things but he wouldn't. Not now. No matter how tempted he was to close that distance between them. She was thanking him and he was confused for a moment, not quite following where she was coming from. Her arm. His lie for her benefit.

""S nothin'." He shrugged his shoulders and she dropped her hand from his arm and he cleared his throat, turning and walking towards the door, standing where he stood while she'd undressed. "I'll umm, just wait here."

The spell might have been broken and they might have a lot more questions between them than answers but one thing was certain. She dressed slowly while she pondered what had just happened. Beth had never been really sure that Daryl could feel that way about someone. I mean sure, he was a man and all but he never struck her as the type to. To do what? She found she was having a hard time with how she felt about Daryl and his sexuality but she didn't ever really consider it until she was standing in front of him in now. She guessed it was stupid to think that he couldn't have sexual feelings. Of course he did. She was glad of one thing though. One question definitely got answered. Could he feel that way about her? Oh yes. The answer was yes. He confirmed it when she cleared her throat and he turned back around to face her. That desire had not slipped away like she thought it would. It wasn't raw like before but it was still there smoldering beneath the surface.

She stepped forward before she could lose her nerve and stood on tiptoe pressing her lips to his cheek, vowing that the next time she was this close it wouldn't be his cheek she'd go for. It would be his lips. To see if that smolder in his eyes could be set afire. As she stepped back from him and saw the curve of his lips into a smile, she figured it could. Before either of the had time to process this new physical contact, they both jumped at the door opening up. "Oh I'm sorry." Beth eye's flew up to greet their intruder to be met with the unmistakable gaze of her sister.

The three of them stared for a long minute and Beth saw the question in her sister's eyes. What had just transpired between her and Daryl. And then Beth realized her mistake. She hadn't put her jacket back on yet and the telltale mark on her arm was completely visible.

Before Beth could think to jump away, Maggie grabbed her arm, her eyes snapping to Beth's and refusing to back down. "What the hell happened to your arm?"

 


	6. Riding Into the Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth fields Maggie's many questions but how long can she keep pretending nothing is wrong and she is the same Beth as before?

Her sister seemed to have a never-ending barrage of questions that tumbled from her lips, one right after the other, like they were tripping on one another. "What happened to your arm? What did they did to you? Are you okay?" Her voice was getting more and more insistent with each question, not in a whining high pitched manner. Oh no, Maggie had never been prone to whining.

No Maggie had quite predictably slipped back into her concerned sister role and there was something almost parental about it and it grated on her nerves.

" _I miss Maggie bossin' me around_." Her own voice as a ghost from the past came back to haunt her and she figured she was pretty good at that. Sayin' stuff and regretting it later. Like hers and Daryl's game of 'I Never'. Well that wish was coming back to bite her in the ass because here was Maggie, being bossy as usual.

It only occurred to her later that she hadn't slipped back into her own role where she and her sister were concerned and that was probably half the problem between them.

"Are ya gonna answer me or not?" There was that insistence again in her sister's voice. Beth closed her eyes against the bubbling anger and she felt Daryl's palm on her lower back, just lightly grazing the skin there. He was letting her know in his way that he was there for her. She took a deep breath and felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders as she steeled herself to answer more questions by giving an answer to just the one about her arm.

It was right then that the door burst back open and Pete stumbled back in, his face brightening when he saw Maggie. "Maggie May, it's about time you came back in here. Oh wait, you had an appointment." Beth couldn't help the grimace that came across her face as Pete entered Maggie's personal space. To Maggie's credit and Beth's amazement, her sister didn't knock him on his ass and instead reached out an arm to steady him. Beth could smell the liquor from where she stood and she was sure if someone lit a match in here right now, he would go up in flames.

Maggie put an arm around the man and helped him along. "Let's get ya into your office, okay Pete?" She glanced at Beth as she gently led a stuporous Pete into the room that Beth and Daryl had just come from. Beth took that as her cue to leave and turned on her heel, knowing Daryl would come with her. That was understood between them; that they were a package deal now. Where one went, the other followed. It's what Daryl needed and she understood that. What she was only beginning to understand is that she needed the same thing. The assurance that he was close by and she'd never have to endure a separation from him again. It had been too painful and even a minute now felt like an eternity and though she didn't quite understand that part of it she was starting to. She figured it had everything to do with how he'd looked at her in that exam room. If that set her heart to fluttering like it had when she'd sat next to him in that funeral home, well then that was okay too.

Maggie's voice stopped her when her hand grasped the door handle to leave. "This conversation isn't over."

Something boiled up in Beth's veins like molten lava, creeping upward out of the simmering volcano, just ready to erupt and it threatened to consume her.

" _I miss Maggie bossin' me around."_

That might have been true then. A little sister's wishes but Maggie was doing anything in her book to earn that kind of respect, that kind of reverence, and it she hadn't for a long time. Beth felt every muscle in her body tighten in preparation, for what she didn't know, and every nerve stood on edge as she barely spat out her words. "It _is_ over Maggie." She spun on her heel and walked out, her pace brisk as she sped up the sidewalk, Daryl in tow. She didn't even know where the hell she was going, just far from her sister. She couldn't recall a time when she'd ever been so angry.

"Hey Beth, hey Daryl." Aaron stepped in front Beth on the sidewalk outside the clinic and Daryl saw the way Beth's haunches went up. The way she got in fighting stance; it was an instinctive move and he knew it well. After all he was the one who had taught her how to do it.

But now was not the time. She was on high alert and he quickly stepped forward and put his hand on her elbow, just grazing his fingertips over her skin, letting her know he was there. It struck him how similar it was to when she'd hugged him that first time. He'd been so unsure of what to do as he stood in her cell, so uncertain of what she might need but she stepped forward and curled herself into him, he'd somehow understood for the first time the comfort of human touch. He'd never known that before. The only people that ever touched him before set out to hurt him. His father had been the first and well even though his ma had never been cruel about it, she'd been known to backhand him a time or two. Even Merle had belted him a time or too, claimed it would make a man out of him or some shit.

Now, as Beth stood there, her breathing coming in short pants like the night she'd been howling at the moon, he gripped her elbow a bit tighter, directing his voice at Aaron nodding slightly. "What can I do for ya Aaron?" He'd been on him about a new job in the community. Right now, Daryl took care of the perimeter but he was growing restless.

"Just wanted to tell you guys that Deanna can see Beth now since she's finished with Pete. Gave her a clean bill of health." His voice was bright at the end as he directed his attention to Beth again and Daryl looked at her. Her breathing had noticeably slowed and she didn't look like she was about to explode anymore and he was hoping he could calm her down but damn he didn't think he'd ever seen her quite this mad.

Beth went to shake her head and Daryl squeezed her elbow gently, leaning into her and whispering. "It's okay. I'll make 'em let me go in too." He looked at Aaron. "Go tell Deanna we'll be there in bit. Tell her that this is a package deal. She talks to both of us or she don't talk to neither of us. 'S the way it's gotta be." He shook the hair out of his eyes and lifted his chin, his jaw set in determination. He could almost taste the hesitation coming off of Aaron in waves.

"Take it or leave it." Beth looked over at Daryl and how calm he was and it amazed her how changed he was from the Daryl before. She took a deep breath and realized that if Daryl Dixon could control his anger and could use diplomacy in a way that rivaled the best leaders in the country, maybe even the world, then maybe she could too.

"It's okay, Daryl." She looked hesitantly from Aaron to Daryl. "Thank you Aaron, tell Deanna that we'll be along in a second. I gotta ask Daryl somethin' first." Beth cast her eyes down for a minute, feeling bad for how she treated him a minute ago. It wasn't his fault she had a shitty sister. "And I'm sorry about before. I'm not myself lately."

Aaron smiled softly. "From what I hear, you've had a hard time. I think you're entitled to being out of sorts for a bit. I'll tell Deanna to expect you." He glanced at Daryl before nodding at both of them. "Both of you."

Beth sighed in relief as he walked away and turned to face Daryl. "I can do this, Daryl." She could see the fight forming in his expression, his brows narrowing down and his jaw set like he was gonna win this no matter what. It only took one slight shift in her feet forward not even quite a step, and she was right in front of him and looking up at him. He was gazing down at her and she could feel his breath warm on the bridge of her nose. "I gotta do this on my own. From what you told me and what Aaron said, it's an interview and I gotta tell stuff that happened to me, at the hospital." She glanced off to the side, a woman in a jogging suit walking her dog. Like it was a normal Tuesday afternoon in an average suburb. She looked back up at Daryl. "It's not that I don't want you to know that stuff. I just don't think I wanna tell you about it in front of a total stranger. Some of it is kinda bad." She looked at him uncertainly and fervently hoped he wasn't gonna fly off the handle at hearing just that tiny bit of what she'd gone through.

He felt a roar in his ears, just a flash, as she spoke and he looked at the scars that marred her beautiful face. They didn't make her any less beautiful. If anything they improved her beauty, making her flawed in a unique way. But knowing how they got there, that was gonna be the death of him, he knew. What was worse is though he knew those scars that had been permanently etched into the canvas of her innocent flesh, the ones underneath were the ones that had marked her the most. He saw it in her steely gaze now. Saw it in the straightening in her spine when someone got too close and most of all, he felt it in the convulsing, soul-crushing sobs that emanated from her body whenever she remembered whatever those pricks had done to her. He nodded slowly, pulling his lower lip in between his teeth, his words coming out begrudgingly but he got it. "Okay." He got her need to deal with this in her own way. He figured he probably got that better than anybody.

He sighed and straightened, his hand coming out like it wasn't even tethered to the thinkin' part of his brain and gently tucked a strand of wheat gold hair behind her ear. His fingers felt impossibly huge next to her tiny ear and his skin looked so dark against her own much paler tone but one thing was certain, he sure liked the way he felt when he touched her. He liked even more the soft look that came into her eyes when he did; like she actually _liked_ him touching her. And of course she did. She was the one that had taught him that touch could be a good thing. He had to keep reminding himself that Beth wasn't like other people. She wasn't like other girls. But Beth weren't no girl, he reminded himself. Not that he needed a reminder after being stuck in that exam room with her sitting on that table in that damn paper gown. Her voice snapped him back into the present and he flushed at the memory and pulled his hand back.

"I'll be out in a little while." Her voice was low, so only he could have heard the next part. "Don't leave me, okay?"

It was all he could do to swallow and nod as she walked away, heading into Deanna's house. "I'll be right here."

She turned back around just before he began to walk over to the patio furniture Deanna had set up outside the armory. They had gatherings sometimes here and he figured it was as good a place to wait as any. "Daryl." Her voice stopped him and his head snapped up and flashed to hers. "Thanks for being here."

"Ain't nothin'." He shrugged and she smiled at him softly. She saw. It _wasn't_ nothing. It was everything and he was gonna wait right here because if there was one thing, Dixons kept their promises. He wasn't going anywhere. Not without Beth. Never again.

* * *

Some of the fire in her anger over Maggie still lingered as she walked up the steps to this Deanna person's house. She steeled her nerves for this upcoming "interview" and she couldn't help mentally comparing this place with her last permanent dwelling. It had unnerved her a bit to learn that she'd have to audition for a place in the community but she understood the logic behind the idea. They needed to get to know the people that were going to live inside their walls. See if they were trustworthy. She'd always thought herself a trustworthy person before. But just now with Aaron. Her face flushed. Her Daddy would have skinned her hide had he been around to see her treat someone like that. She'd been rude and she really thought she could have decked the man. And that just wasn't normal. She thought again about the words she'd thrown out the night she and Daryl had gotten drunk on moonshine.

" _I wish I just could just….change."_ She'd wanted to. More than anything. Beth sighed. As she knocked on the door of Deanna's house, she thought sometimes hated the girl she used to be more than the girl she was now and she felt that urge again. To just change. But she felt stuck. Mired in the present, in the past and she felt like, if anything, she'd changed _too_ much. They all had.

Beth heard footsteps across the floor, heels if she had to guess, though that couldn't be right. No one wore heels in this world anymore, did they? The door opened and Beth was greeted by the sight of Deanna and indeed she was wearing a neat taupe pantsuit and brown peep-toe pumps and stepped back with a flair that would rival any runway model, even if she was nearing sixty. "Come in, Beth." Her smile was warm as she stepped back, making room for Beth to enter.

Beth glanced around, taking in the earth tones and chunky furniture along with the heavy wood brick-a-brack and though it was homey enough, Beth felt uneasy. She glanced to the center of the room, her attention drawn towards where a makeshift studio was set up. Two arm chairs sat on either side of a coffee table, a camera on a tripod aimed towards the other chair which was positioned in front of a floor to ceiling bookcase. Beth eyed the titles on the shelves and noted the eclectic variety of titles and made a mental note to ask later about a library. The thought startled her. The fact that such a mundane thing had entered her mind, books to read, when it had been so long since she'd done anything of the sort. Not since the prison anyway.

"This is a lovely home." Beth tried to allow the warmth to reach her eyes; she tried. But all she felt was isolated and alone in this place. She'd told Daryl that she wanted to do this alone and she did, but it was harder than she expected.

"Thank you. We've been here since almost the beginning. Please have a seat." She gestured to the chair opposite hers and waited until Beth was settled before sitting back in her own seat.

"This is really informal. Just a kind of get to know each other session. I know you're probably asking why the taping." The woman seemed to be waiting for an actual response so she nodded. She hadn't really been wondering, not until she mentioned it.

"I've found that you can get to know a person better this way and sometimes if I need to go back if I can't remember something that one of our new residents has told me, I can just review the tape. Sometimes stories can get so mixed up. I guess that's why they wrote the history books way back when. Someone needed an accurate accounting of the events. War, pestilence, famine, drought. " She let her words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. "Apocalypse. This way whoever comes after us, when we're long gone, they'll know what happened here and how hard we worked to get it all back."

Beth's mind flashed to Dawn and her idea that they were just holding on until someone came to save them.

" _No one's comin'_." In the end someone did come, but it hadn't gone as planned, had it? Her hand strayed to her forehead where the tiny bump still existed, a reminder of the day a bullet had ripped through her head and threatened to end her life. _Again_.

Deanna gestured to where Beth was still running her fingers over the knot in her flesh. "Heard you have quite the story. We definitely want to get an accurate documentation on that." Deanna's voice was encouraging and she knew the lady was trying but all Beth could think was how it would never be accurate, because Beth couldn't tell her every single thing that happened to bring her here. She couldn't tell her because that would mean telling her the biggest secret she'd ever had. Her immunity was both a blessing and a curse and it was something she was still processing in her own mind. That meant she couldn't expect others to understand it either.

Beth realized that the woman was staring at her and she nodded. "It's quite the story alright." Her voice was quiet. "It shouldn'ta happened. It was an accident, I acted in a moment of anger and it nearly got me killed." Beth looked up at the woman and her eyes were kind and for a moment, Beth was reminded of her mom. She forced herself not to cry.

" _I don't cry anymore, Daryl."_ That might be a lie now but this lady didn't have to know it. She took a deep breath and forced her thoughts to something pleasant. A good memory. Unbidden, a flash of candlelight and a vision of Daryl spooning food into his mouth ran through her mind, him glancing at her sideways while she told him why she was writing a thank you note. Him telling her that they could stay there and "make it work". She felt the moment the memory did its job and the muscles in her neck seemed to untangle themselves just a bit.

_One question at a time, Beth._

"What can you tell me about yourself? Something that will tell me you're the kind of person that Alexandria needs to have around. I've heard a lot of things about you. Good things. But I want to hear it from you."

Beth faltered. No one had ever asked her what she had to offer a group before. Several things flashed through her mind. Babysitter. Cook. Sounding board. Yep, those all fit at the prison. Her mind moved along the timeline of her life, further back, to the before of the world and a different set of words flitted through her mind: Sister, daughter, friend.

Now? Now she wasn't sure. She didn't know who she was or what it was that would make them want to let her live there. Honestly, Beth wasn't sure she even wanted to sometimes. Too many people, not enough wide open space and suddenly it came to her that she understood Daryl's need to be in the woods. After spending all those months on the run after the farm and then her and Daryl's time together and the time she just spent, her and Morgan traveling together. She didn't know who that girl was. "I'm not sure where to start." Beth held her hands out, feeling a little helpless and at a loss for words.

"Why not start at the beginning?" Deanna suggested gently.

Beth nodded. The beginning. That, she could do. It had been going well. She told Deanna almost all of it and when she got to the part about Gorman she skimmed over most of the details.

"We have a counselor here. Jessie. Pete's wife. She helps a lot of the ladies who've had things like that happen to them. And worse. That reminds me. I think I have the perfect assignment for you once you're settled in."

Beth looked at her warily. The woman seemed pleased with herself that she'd thought of it. "What is it?"

"Pete needs an assistant there in the clinic. It sounds like you were an invaluable asset to this doctor that cared for you. Plus wasn't your father a veterinarian?" The older woman's voice sounded very far away to Beth.

"Beth?" The voice was a little more insistent.

It was so easy to just click that switch like she had after her mama came out of the barn. Just flip that switch and go someplace else, away from reaching hands and the rot of decay and too many damn questions that she just didn't want to answer. That she _couldn't_ answer.

Her ears were ringing and suddenly all she could think about was Pete's breath, alcohol laden, breathing on her neck and when she looked up, he was gone. In his place was Gorman, his hands reaching for her.

_Then suddenly she was back there in that hallway as they wheeled Percy in. Why had he tried to leave? Hadn't he seen what happened to Joan? What had nearly happened to her? She could not imagine why he had felt the need to run away especially since he wasn't the most spry person she knew. It appeared he had been bitten on the neck and the blood was blossomed out over his skin and seeping down into the slate blue of his scrubs. Oh God and there was so much of it. It was everywhere and oozing down, dripping onto the floor, and she tasted the bitter sting of bile on the back of her tongue as another memory slipped in to replace it, her Daddy and him kneeling in front of that horrible man at the prison while everyone helplessly watched. "Liar"_

_That sweet smile had crept onto her Daddy's face and the next thing she knew his head was hanging off at an unnatural angle, Michonne's katana having effectively ended his life. Of all the good things her father had one in his long life and at the end he was taken out by a madman. Blood was everywhere she looked and the stench of death and decay was so strong and she realized she must have found her way to the basement again. Except not where Dr. Edwards sometimes took her. She was at the bottom of the elevator shaft where so many bodies were and she had an insane urge to lay down with them. Just curl up and sleep the long sleep. So she did. She laid down and then she felt the hands coming up from under her, clawing and biting, her arm throbbing and as one clamped down right where her cast was, its putrid mouth sticking to the plaster of Paris and gnawing and she felt a break of the bone, a snap and a searing pain and she screamed._

* * *

Daryl forced himself to stay seated on the stone bench outside the Monroe residence and he told himself he was fine. Told himself she was okay up there without him. Told himself that she'd be done soon enough. He told himself a lot of things.

He made a mental checklist of everything that happened in the past couple of days and he realized that his mind was having a hard time keeping track of it all. Ever since Beth came back, everything sort of melted together into one big event, one whirlwind of activity and he'd been caught up in that pace ever since. Caught. He smiled at the memory that one word brought. When she'd told him she was caught up in what they were feeling. And he'd gotten exactly what she meant. There had been a time when he might not have understood it. Or maybe he would have understood but he'd act like he didn't. He wasn't that guy anymore. Don't get him wrong, he was still what he considered rough around the edges but even Carol had noticed how much Beth had smoothed all those rough parts. Like water lapping against the pebbles in a creek bed. They might be a little jagged at first but over time and exposure and the tides of change, gradually all those rough edges get filed down until things are smooth and instead of the water babbling over the surface of the rocks, it just seems to glide, like things just flow better that way.

He figured that's what Beth had done. She'd worn at him and worked her way under his skin and she'd taken kindness and compassion and without him even realizing it, she'd filed away all the splintered parts of him until every jagged edge was smooth as glass. Still, that didn't mean he needed to go all soft, he reminded himself.

Lord what that girl did to him. Made him think stuff he'd never thought of before. Not the hearts and flowers shit like the movies, well not so far anyway, but she sure had him thinking a lot of things he'd never thought before. He figured it was because she believed in him. He didn't reckon anyone believed in him like this before, least not like her.

He glanced up at the window where he knew Beth was undergoing the safe zone's version of the Spanish Inquisition. He knew his own interview hadn't been very forthcoming. After all, he had carried a very recently dead opossum into his audition. He smirked at the memory and made a mental note to tell Beth that story later. She'd get a kick out of it. He hoped it was going well.

A blood-curdling scream rent the air around him and he was on his feet before the echo of it even began. He didn't process the whys or the hows, he just _moved_.

He didn't knock, didn't ask if it was okay. He threw every bit of manners he had out the window and barged into the Monroe residence, heading for the little room where he knew Deanna conducted her interviews. Deanna was smoothing the hair back from an extremely distraught Beth.

"Goddammit what did you say to her? Did you do somethin'?" Red hot rage coursed through his veins and all he wanted to do was tear this place apart until he figured out what the hell had Beth crying like she had in the middle of the street that night.

* * *

It had been going so well, Beth thought as she heard Daryl and Deanna talking in hushed tones over her head as Daryl settled himself on the chair beside her, his hulking frame a commanding presence and Beth was grateful for it. She wished she'd let him come with her now. At least he'd have been able to voice for her, since clearly she hadn't been able to, when the questions became too much. She should have known there would be a threshold for how many memories you could process at a time. She had some experience with it since all her memories were shit and were likely to produce the response they just had, which was a full blown flashback.

Yes, all of it had gone well. Until it went bad. Very bad. Her flashback still had her reeling and she wondered why this kept happening to her.

Suddenly Beth remembered Pete's breath and how he had gotten into Maggie's personal space and how Gorman had done the same thing to her, only Maggie hadn't freaked out like this.

"I'm sorry." Her voice broke his heart and he looked away from where he had been talking to Deanna (well more like screaming at her actually) and reached up his fingers, not even giving it a second thought that he was actually wiping her tears away with the rough pads of his callused fingers.

"Stop now, ya ain't got nothin' to be sorry for. You been through a lot. 'S just too much is all." His voice was soothing from beside her and she worked at steadying her breathing as she sniffed back the rest of her tears, finally looking at him, really looking at him and she saw the hell he'd been through too. Some of that because of her.

He spared a second to glance at Deanna and her attention was riveted to the two of them. "I'm guessin' you're done here now." Daryl realized as soon as the words left his mouth that he really didn't mean it to be a question. It was a statement of fact. He was getting her out of here. In fact he had an idea that was just now forming. In light of how Beth had reacted to everything since she'd been here, he found it easy to pinpoint the problem. It was the same thing that happened to him sometimes when there was just too much shit going on and he needed to get out of his own head.

Deanna shook her head as if trying to clear her thoughts. "Yes, we are finished. I am sorry, Beth for all you've been through. And sorry too for you being re-traumatized by talking about it." Deanna looked up at Daryl and she looked like she might be getting ready to apologize to him and he just shook his head. That snapped her jaws back shut and he got up from the chair and extending his hand to Beth, helping her up.

Before they headed out the door, he turned to Deanna one last time. "Figure you can find him better 'an I can. Tell Aaron to meet me at the gate in an hour. Tell him I said yes to his job offer." He didn't say it, but he had a couple conditions and one of them was standing right next to him.

As he thought ahead, he realized that a giant weight felt like it was lifting from his shoulders and he could kick himself for not thinking of it sooner. "Come on, Greene. We're goin' on a little trip."

* * *

Beth hefted her pack onto her shoulder and glanced around the room she had barely occupied here behind the walls of the safe zone. She walked down the steps of the house she had very briefly shared with Glenn and Maggie and shockingly it hadn't been the shortest time she'd spent someplace. Once when she and Daryl had been camping out in the woods they'd been there maybe five minutes, stringing up twine and cans when they heard the first few groans of a herd. They'd quickly packed up everything and left. They ended up spending the night and the better part of the next day in the trunk of a car. It was one of those large sprawling trunks from old four door sedans but still, it was a trunk.

"I'm gonna miss ya." Maggie's voice was soft and Beth realized that her sister was holding back. She should have laid into her about something by now. Her arm. The hospital. Her and Daryl's relationship. But she was silent and as Beth looked across the room to where Daryl waited by the front door with all the stuff they would need for their run, she could figure the reason for Maggie's unusual silence.

She stepped forward quickly and gave her sister a quick hug, barely embracing her before stepping away but it was all she could manage after what had just happened that afternoon. "See ya soon."

She walked out of her sister's house and Daryl followed with his bow and the larger backpack that held the tent they were taking with them. Daryl had explained how when Aaron and Eric went scouting or sometimes just Aaron and Daryl, one of the other men would take the car, but he took his bike. She'd smiled at him when he'd told her he had rebuilt himself a new bike with all the spare parts in Aaron and Eric's garage. It was a thing of beauty and she could tell how proud he was of it. "I'm glad you got a new bike. It's a shame ya lost the old one."

"Mmm." They were both lost in thought for a minute, thinking about everything they'd left behind that day. Beth figured that might have been the day she left behind that girl from the farm. Daddy's little girl and Maggie's younger sister. She didn't know who she was now but one thing was for sure, she felt lighter as they reached the gate of the safe zone. Her heart was thrumming a little bit in her chest and she would be lying if she didn't admit that some of it was due to the fact that she was going to be all alone with Daryl again.

They had already arranged everything with Aaron who had readily agreed to Daryl's suggestion that she go with him on his runs. He'd reasoned that since Deanna thought she was skilled enough to work alongside a doctor in the clinic, then she was definitely skilled enough to be a field medic and that was something that they sorely needed out in the open. This mission was the bare bones kind, meant to outfit Beth with a new weapon and supplies for her new occupation.

"Be safe out there." Nicholas opened the gate and Daryl nodded as he grabbed the handlebars and pushed the bike to the other side of the walls as she followed behind.

No one came to see them off; that was one of his conditions too. She'd already been overwhelmed enough and the whole point, other than getting the supplies they were going after, was to get her out of there, away from all the stress of being around so many people again.

The gates closed behind them and she looked at Daryl a little uncertainly. "You ain't never ridden one afore have ya?" She shook his head and he thought for a minute. "Well, there's a first time for everything." He stashed the tent in the large back compartment and mounted his bow on the rack he'd custom built for these occasions and climbed on, patting the seat behind him. "Get on."

Beth looked at him and a little thrill went through her at the thought of getting to ride on his motorcycle and it had quite a bit to do with the fact that she got to press herself against him for the ride. She climbed on back of the bike and she placed her arms around his middle, gripping tight but not so much that he couldn't move. "This okay?"

"'S good. You might wanna lean on me though, okay? Don't wanna lose ya." That thought struck a chord of terror in her like nothing she'd ever known. Beth scooted forward and leaned in at his suggestion and pressed her face to the soft leather of his vest, a bit of fraying on the angel wings tickling her cheek.

"Like this?" Beth's voice was soft and close to his shoulder and he could swear his heart was beating so loud with her pressed against his back like that she could probably hear it too. But if she did, she didn't let on.

Daryl nodded. He saw a flash of something that looked like fear in her eyes and he recognized what he said had struck something in her. He turned his head a bit more making sure she heard him. "Hey. I didn't mean it like that. I ain't gonna lose ya. Not ever again." She only nodded at him and he needed her to understand the full gravity of his words. That he meant it. He strained his body a bit to turn towards her more, and reaching one hand back to her knee, he flattened his palm there, molding his hand to the curve of her knee. It was automatic, almost instinctual, and he squeezed lightly. "I mean it, Beth. I ain't gonna leave you. Not unless you tell me to."

Beth sighed and she swore her heart skipped at least three beats when he reached back and squeezed her leg. "A package deal right?" She beamed one of those smiles at him and he felt like he always did, like he'd been struck blind with a ray of sunshine. That was the Beth Greene smile that he missed so much. He figured he missed her smile as much as he missed anything else about her. Something about the way she looked at you when she smiled, made ya feel like you were warmed from the inside out. It was a feeling he'd gotten used to when he'd been with her all those months ago. When she was taken from him, he felt like all the warmth and light had gone with her.

Now that she was back, he was gonna make damn sure he didn't lose that again. He couldn't bear it. Even if things weren't the way they are with them now he knew he couldn't go through all that again. It had nearly killed him the last time.

"That's right. You and me." Her mentioning his words to Deanna earlier and her answering smile had him smiling too, like there was something worth smiling about and he didn't figure that had happened in a good long while. It was hard to believe that there was anything in this world left to smile about but there was. She was sitting right here behind him. "You ready to get out of here now?"

She beamed at him and gripped him around the waist, this time her face coming to rest easily against the warmth of his back. She thought over his words. _"I'm not gonna leave you."_ It was an echo of her words to him on that long ago night, the night her life changed forever. Well one of them anyway. She felt it as he started the bike and they drove out of town; a subtle shift in the energy between them.

"You and me." There was a strange sense of anchoring in that phrase and the fact that Daryl had said it to her made it even better. As they raced away into the afternoon, Beth felt lighter than she had in months and she had to wonder at the irony that she felt safer in this moment, out in the open where all manner of things could and would kill you, than she had in all her time inside the walls. She was just starting to figure out that her safety net was right here, in front of her and it wasn't just the physical sense that she felt safer around him. It was hard to explain but somehow it was only around Daryl, and only him that she really felt herself. She wasn't sure who that was exactly and she was still figuring all that out but one thing was certain. She wasn't who she was and Daryl wasn't either but what they were becoming was just what he said. A package deal _. You and me,_ he'd said and lord if that just didn't make her want to smile.

Her Daddy had always said, " _without hope, what's the point of living_." For the first time in a really long time, she felt hopeful and she knew it was all because of Daryl Dixon. She settled in as he guided the bike in and out of any obstacles in their path, only having to stop once to move a fallen log out of their path. They had no particular destination in mind and had no one to get back to. They were really and truly alone in their own world again and for a moment, as the sun was beginning to set on the horizon, a lone shambling walker trying to grab them as they passed, Beth imagined a world where it could be like that forever. Just her and Daryl and the endless open road, riding off into the sunset, apocalypse style.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, surprise! They are gonna go outside the gates and Beth will take Aaron's place although that is not to say that he won't join them from time to time. But I think they deserve a little time away from prying eyes so they can figure this thing out. Also Beth has a lot to figure out too. She needs to find her place; that's why I gave her this job, something for her to concentrate on and feel needed. I have a lot of interesting stuff planned that will parallel comic events and I hope you like it. Thanks for reading! Until next time, xoxoxo


	7. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff. Uber fluff. Marshmallow fluff. Get your insulin and prepare for cavities, but I think you'll like this chapter!

She spotted it before he did, the slanted roof just barely peeking out from the trees and if it hadn't been for the sun setting, she didn't think either one of them would have seen it, set back off the road such that it was. She tapped Daryl and pointed her finger where she knew the glint of the sun off the tin roof was directing flecks of glare back in his eyes as it was hers. She felt the curve of a smile ghosting her lips as he directed the bike towards the overgrown path that was much rockier than it appeared and Beth had to move quickly to lock her arms around his waist, ensuring that she didn't fall off at the next bump they went over. She could swear she heard (and felt) the faint rumble of Daryl laughing as she clutched him tighter as she they were both jarred by a deep rut in the path, the brambles of the trees hitting Beth's legs as they passed and she had a brief thought of the time Jimmy had taken her four-wheeling in the woods behind the farm. She'd stupidly worn shorts and she had gotten a rather nasty scratch from a jutting branch from one of the many fallen trees they passed. It was odd how memories like that would creep up on you, reminding you of a simpler time, a time when the dead didn't roam the earth and they could be the ones grabbing at you when you passed by instead of tree branches. Oddly though, she wouldn't trade this uncertain time with Daryl for that simpler time with Jimmy and she knew it had everything to do with the way her heart thrummed against his back as they made their gravelly way up the rest of the path.

Daryl brought the bike to a stop before the run-down shanty that reminded him an awful lot of the moonshine still they had happened upon so long ago. The yard wasn't trashed though so maybe there was hope for finding more than a dozen jars of moonshine and a trunk full of old memories. He shut the bike off and felt a hitch in his breath when Beth removed her arms from around his waist. For the past three hours, he had gotten used to having her wrapped around him and now that she was climbing off the back of the bike, the loss of warmth startled him. It was usually her touching him that had his breathing go all funny. He had nearly gotten used to that. _Nearly_. But now he was finding himself losing his breath because she _wasn't_ touching him and if that didn't confuse the hell out of him, he didn't know what did.

He climbed off the bike after her and reached his arms over his head, feeling the pull in his muscles and the creak in his bones. He took a moment to check out how his travel partner was faring and felt his lips coming up in a wry grin when he realized her predicament. She was bent over at the moment and it was quite obvious that she was suffering the effects of too long in the saddle, so to speak. "You okay?"

"Ohhh." Beth groaned as she stepped away from the bike, reaching down and bracing her hands on either thigh, leaning over. "I feel like I've been riding Nellie all day." She groaned again as she stood back up. "Bareback". She added as she looked up at Daryl and noticed for the first time that he was chuckling under his breath.

"It's not funny." She grumbled, but there was no bite in her words and he knew it.

"'M sorry, you're right, ain't nothin' funny about bein' saddlesore? Yeah, I forgot to mention that the first long ride on a bike like that is bound to make ya that way." He studied her grimace. "Where are ya the most sore at?"

Beth's eyes flashed to his as her hands had just gone to the spot that hurt the most on her whole body. Her ass. She had been trying not to be too obvious but as her eyes met his she knew he had just figured it out and she couldn't help the giggle that escaped her lips. "My butt." Her fingers came up to push some wild fly-aways behind her ears and she gazed up at him where he now faced her.

"Ain't surprised, ya too skinny for your own good." His hand came to rest on her shoulder as he gently guided her in the direction of the shack. "Let's go see if this place is clear. Walkin' around might work out some of the soreness." Her answering smile was enough for him and well, if the thought flashed through his mind of another hands-on, way to relieve the soreness in her ass, he wasn't admitting to it.

He brushed that thought aside as it did nothing to tamp down this ever growing feeling that something was going on between the two of them and he was just now beginning to figure what it was though he wasn't sure how. Because it wasn't like he had anything to compare it to, this feeling of fullness in his chest, and sense of _rightness_ when he was with Beth. He wondered if it had something to do with all the mushy stuff in the movies Merle had always drug him to or if this was all his imagination. He wondered if it might be a ghost of something his ma and pa must have felt for each other at one time or another. He kicked that thought out almost before it had a chance to form. Almost. Because comparing him and Beth to his parents was like comparing light and dark or good and bad. Then he was confused even more because he couldn't think of himself as light and good, knowing his mother and father were the bad in this story. Only Beth held those good qualities of light and hope and love. Was that what this was? Love?

He'd never tried to put a name to it, this feeling that he only associated with Beth. Like he'd be swallowed up by it and that was okay because it was her and it was him and that was all that mattered in the world. That feeling had been something quite different though when he'd thought she was dead. Gone from him forever. Where once they were together and it was just the two of them against the world.

You're gonna be the last man standin'.

Oh how'd he'd hated those words especially when they had been followed so closely by "you're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon." He'd never hated this world more than the day he figured out just what she'd meant by that. He'd never hated _himself_ more. And now that she was here, things had come full circle and he had no idea what to do with any of it. So he just squeezed her shoulder again.

"Come on." He nodded at the building before them and she nodded back at him and they climbed the steps to the porch together, falling into their old pattern and going almost by rote. He rapped on the door a couple times while they waited, listening for the telltale hungry growls of walkers. Hearing nothing, she nodded at him once before swinging the door open, her knife at the ready. He ducked into the outer room quickly, bow loaded and aimed at any impending threat. Beth shone her flashlight into each corner of the room and seeing nothing, he nodded to the hallway that led to the rest of the house and she crept behind him as they approached the first doorway carefully. The kitchen held little else besides a woodstove and a table with two chairs that had seen better days but it was empty of any walkers so they turned back to the only other doorway, the bedroom and Daryl rapped on this door and they heard it. The awakening snarl of a walker and then a growl and some disjointed out of beat knocking and scratching of dead fingers clawing against the plywood of the door. Daryl held up two fingers to indicate how many dead ones they were dealing with and Beth gave him a slight tip of her head, indicating her understanding. The door swung inward knocking their opponents on their asses, making it easy and nearly effortless to take them out. Beth took the one on the right, bringing her foot down in the middle of its chest to hold it in place while she brought her knife down swiftly through the left eye socket, the hilt of the blade bringing an ooze of goo when she pulled it back out with a sickening squelch. Daryl dispatched the other one with a well-placed bolt to the head, retrieving it quickly.

They carried the bodies back out to the porch and left them on the steps, their rotting bodies good camouflage from any nearby shambling walkers. Wordlessly and like a well-oiled machine, the two of them went about setting up camp just like old times, Beth scavenging for cans, silverware and tin pie plates that they then strung together near where the two dead walkers lay, to provide an alarm of sorts in case of intruders. They didn't say it out loud but Beth knew they had picked this place because it was off the beaten path and given how they'd almost missed it through the tree line, it most likely meant that other people had missed it too. It was the living that scared her the most now, Beth thought. And why not, since apparently she could be bit by the dead and not die; or turn. She was immune to whatever was in these things that turned everyone else into one of them. And she wasn't stupid. She knew what her immunity was worth and what it could end up costing her in the end. She just tried not to think of it is all. It was bad enough that the world had ended and even worse all the bad stuff that had happened to all of them and she was grateful to be alive, sure. But at what cost? Eventually she knew someone would figure out her secret and it was only a matter of time before someone decided to figure out why she was different, why she didn't die. Her fingers flew to her forehead, fingering the scar there. Why it appeared that she actually _couldn't_ die.

Even though they hadn't seen many walkers on the way up to the house, just a lone walker shambling here and there, they decided not to risk starting a fire in the fireplace. It wasn't all that cold yet at night and there was no sense in risking it if they didn't have to. Smoke curling up out of a chimney over the tree line may attract the dead and living alike and that just wasn't something Daryl was gonna let happen. Not ever again.

Satisfied that the porch was rigged as best as it could be to alert them to someone's presence, they went inside and shut the door behind them. Beth went about scavenging every square inch of the place while Daryl set to securing every door and window for the night.

By the time they met back in the front room, darkness had gathered outside and it was rather dim in the cabin. Daryl had put trash bags in a layer three thick over the windows so the light from their lantern couldn't be detected from the outside. There wasn't any furniture in the place, unfortunately, so Beth gathered the blankets she'd found from the bedroom and shook out any remaining dust to make a pallet on the floor. She saved the patchwork quilt for the top; it would ward off any chill that might linger in the air once they settled for the night. She swore when it was light out she was going to find a way to take the quilt with them. It could prove handy if the temperature dropped and they were forced to use the tent. Her mind had a flash of them sharing the same blanket and though they'd done that a million times before, when it had been just the two of them, somehow now it seemed different. It held a different weight than it had before and it should have made her nervous, but it didn't.

Beth was the first to break the silence between them. The silence between them now was not that uncomfortable kind between two strangers or even the same silence that stood between them like a wall in those first few days after the fall of the prison. No, this was the silence of two people who had absorbed all the rhythms of their companion, knew their tells, knew when to speak and when to just be. All of that happening without any effort from either of them or even having to think about it. And it never occurred to her that it was thus between them until just now. "This is nice." She looked at him, her eyes catching his and she smiled at him so he'd know what she was saying. (He did).

Daryl cleared his throat. "Mmmhmm. Missed this." He glanced about the cabin. "This should do for the night. We can move on at first light see if we can find somethin'. Aaron was tellin' me about a small town east of here. Said all the roads to it were blocked in the early days after everything happened so a lot of it might be intact." He didn't say it but he was hoping they'd come across a bow for Beth. She had been so good at firing his, showing real promise, that he'd had the thought back then that she needed her own, something she could load by herself. She could load his but it was always an effort and he'd prefer it if she could load bolts effortlessly and not have to concentrate so much on how much weight she'd have to pull to make it happen.

Beth finished smoothing out the pallet and sat down at the edge where she'd arranged all the loot she'd found in the tiny cabin they now inhabited. "Two cans of tomatoes, a pair of trimming sheers, a sewing kit, two nail files, six cans of Vienna sausages, and one can of mystery contents. That's it."

Daryl snorted and picked up the can whose label had long ago fallen off. She'd looked for it in the back of the pantry where she'd found the others, hoping for something to help her discern what it might contain but found nothing but an open sleeve of saltine crackers that she'd not had the stomach to test and a handful of coffee beans that had her mouth watering for the real thing. She fished one of them out of her pocket now, breaking it in half and putting it to her nose, inhaling deeply. She groaned in frustration. "I miss coffee." She handed him one half of it. His fingers grazed hers on taking it from between her thumb and forefinger and she delighted in watching the look come over his face as he smelled it as she had.

"Maybe we'll find some in that town." He said as he handed it back to her.

"What else you think we might find?" She was curious. He knew this area better than her probably. She'd only come straight in with Morgan. They hadn't done much exploring of the area closest to Alexandria. Once Aaron had told her about Alexandria and showed them the pictures that convinced her that he had been telling the truth about a safe place, pictures of Rick and Carl, her family, she had been intent on getting there.

Now here she sat with Daryl and wondered at the universe. When he'd ridden onto her farm all those months ago, she would have never guessed that she'd end up with him like this. She wondered what "this" was, to him. She already knew what it was to her or she was beginning to. She had feelings for Daryl and she was trying to think of a time when she didn't. She guessed it had to be before, when the prison had fallen, when he hadn't been speaking to her, not really anyway. Most of what had come from his mouth was grunts and grumbles in a chorus of negativity. It wasn't until that day at the moonshine shack that he'd opened up to her. It was then that their bond had formed; it was then that she'd started to look at Daryl differently.

She'd begun to see him as more than a protector, a teacher, a mentor. She'd started to see him instead as a partner, a friend, and then, just when she thought she had figured it all out, things shifted between them and she'd started to see him as something….more. More than a friend, more than a mentor, more than a partner, but they still hadn't reached that point where they had figured out what that more meant. But they were starting to and maybe out here, on their own again, they could flesh it all out.

Daryl shrugged at her question then sat down beside her, picking up the mystery can. "Could be we find you a new bow." He said it nonchalantly but he could feel the excitement coming off her in waves as her eyes flew to him. He pretended to study the can for a moment, running his fingers over the places where the glue from the wrapper still clung, then turned to see the glee dancing in her eyes.

"Really?" Her voice had jumped an octave and she laughed at herself. "I mean, I'll try not to get my hopes up. What are the chances we'd find something like that? It would have to be a miracle."

It hit him between the eyes sometimes how pretty she was and when she laughed like she just had and her head was tilted to the side, much like it had been the night they'd been separated, and the smile died on her lips but her eyes still held that warmth, he thought he'd never seen anything prettier in his whole life the way Beth was looking at him right now waiting on his answer. And it was like she wasn't just waiting on that answer. She was waiting on all the answers to life's biggest questions and it nearly took his breath away at the realization that she trusted him that much. Then he realized he trusted her just as much.

"I think the chances are pretty good seein' how you shouldn't even be sittin' here next to me right now." He said honestly. Once again, his mouth went saying more than he intended but he didn't regret it and it was strange how it was getting easier to say stuff like that to her. Putting words to stuff tumbling around in his head had never been his strong suit but Beth made it so he could. With her, he found the voice he never even knew he had and somehow in the midst of it he was able to string more than two words together and actually make sense.

Beth smiled softly at his words but she heard the pain behind them too. Heard everything he meant when he said she shouldn't be sitting here. That she should be dead, but she wasn't. And if she was alive when it had been impossible to think so. And if that was possible then maybe it opened up a whole lot of other possibilities too. "Maybe you bein' here ain't the only miracle we get out of this world. Maybe we find the bow and a whole mess of coffee too." He was teasing now and she grinned at him. Then they were both quiet for a moment. Daryl leaned up and put the can down beside the others and when he eased himself back, one arm braced behind him closest to her, and suddenly she was closer than he remembered when he sat down beside her. Her arm was brushing against his and he could feel the warmth of her leg through his jeans.

"You really think it's a miracle, Daryl? Me bein' here. I mean you believe in stuff like that anymore?" Daryl had to think about that one. He didn't know what he believed really, but he had to believe that _some_ higher power was responsible for this angel being back here beside him. And she was that. An angel sent to watch over him because without her, he knew he didn't care about what happened to him. But her, he cared very much about her. Just how much he was just figuring out.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know if there's such a thing as miracles anymore, but you're the closest thing I've seen so it must be true."

The way he was looking at her was taking her breath away. That was saying absolutely nothing of how close he was, how she could almost feel his breath warm on face as he spoke. She didn't know why, but this vein of conversation was something she was comfortable with and she was no longer certain what they were talking about, whether it was her being alive or just the miracle that they were together now.

"I think it's a miracle. I do. I think all of this is just something that doesn't happen 'cept in movies. You know?" But she didn't wait for him to comment, just continued and he waited, and though he didn't realize it he was holding his breath on every word. "The guy and the girl are together in a dangerous situation and then the girl dies. 'Cept she doesn't, the guy just thinks she does and then bam. It's like the universe said it made a mistake and then the guy and the girl, they can be together again."

She hadn't meant it to sound so romantic but now that it was out there, this scenario that her mind created from memories of her and Daryl's time together before, it sounded like some romantic thriller she had seen with Maggie. Those movies always ended the same way too, with the girl and the guy in a passionate embrace, ready to face the world together. Beth flushed at the thought of being in Daryl's passionate embrace. She looked at him and she swore she saw the answer of her unspoken question.

" _Were they together?"_ That was what she was dying to know. She didn't know if they were but it kind of felt like it. They'd been together, physically at least, since she got to Alexandria. He'd not left her side for more than a few minutes and even then the wait to see him again had seemed interminable. It was like she couldn't think of a time now when she wasn't with Daryl. When they weren't together and maybe before she was taken, before she died and came back, maybe they were together before but it was an undefined sort of together. Something that didn't really demand a definition and she'd thought that they could drift back into that but things were rapidly changing and the tether that held them together seemed to demand an answer for the palpable change between them.

"I think it's a miracle, Beth. I do." He didn't know what to say to the rest. Could he shout it to the rooftops because he just got what she was saying. Her story was them. It may be sound like some movie about two fictional characters, them against the odds but this was them. Daryl and Beth and she was very real and what he was feeling right now felt very real. They were the couple that got to be together again. "Is that what we are? Together?" He paused for a minute, letting the weight of his words register with her, let it sink in what he was really asking her because this, this playing of words and skirting around the heart of the matter without coming out and really saying it, he could do, because words for Daryl were hard. This he could manage because she knew him and she knew what he was trying to say and it was working. The slow upturn of the corners of her mouth, curving into a smile at his question told him she knew exactly what he was asking.

He should have known she'd do what she always did. Demanding more. Pushing without really pushing, it was her way. She knew just when to push and when to let it lie and she knew that he had a bit more in him to give on this issue. After all, this was big. This was actually talking about defining this thing between them actually putting a name to it. Well, maybe not a name but at least the idea of one. So that's why he should not have been surprised at her next question.

"Is that what you want? For us to be together?" Beth swore she held her breath waiting for him to answer but she thought she knew. She saw it in his eyes and the darker blue flash she saw when he looked into her eyes as she asked the question, almost like he was willing her to answer for him. But she had to know. She had to know what he was thinking. His eyes said a lot but they didn't say it all and this she really just needed to hear. Even if it was only a monosyllabic yes that he wanted them to be a couple, she needed to hear it from his mouth. She watched his lips as she waited for him to speak and wondered what they would feel like pressed against hers. Would he taste like the cigarette he had smoked before coming back in from securing the porch? Would she like it? She had to guess that she would. She loved everything else about him; it would only make sense if she would love the graze of his tongue against hers, tinged with the lingering haze of smoke and all the things that he left unspoken.

He let out the breath he had been holding because her question that begged answering, answered his own. And that was that she wanted what she was asking him. She wanted him and she wasn't being coy. She wasn't given to being that way. Not with him. Beth was a smart girl and she was also very sweet and that meant she didn't have a cruel bone in her body, not where Daryl was concerned. She thought of Zach and how that morning they'd left on that run and how Zach had asked her if she was going to say good-bye. Beth had been flippant, coy. And though she'd been playful with Daryl, she'd never been like that. She'd always made it clear how she felt. _"I knew it. It's just like I said. There's still good people."_ He had felt weight of what she said in her gaze, her face bright with that soft warm glow. That had been what had allowed him to tell her, well almost, that she had been the one to change his mind about there being good people. She'd been honest with him and he could be honest with her. And it was why she was expecting the same from him now, he realized.

He did want them to be together. He wanted to be with her more than anything, he realized, and he'd wanted it for so long and though he had never allowed himself to think of her that way when she was gone, she wasn't gone now. She was here, right beside him, his very own miracle and so with her watching him with bated breath like she'd cracked his head open and peeked inside to watch the thoughts form into words until they came from his lips (and she probably had), he nodded his head.

"Yeah, I do. That what you want?" But he really didn't have to ask. It was written all over the thousand watt smile she flashed at him, the one that lit him up too from the inside out, making it feel like there was nothing bad out there to get them in here.

"Yes." She seemed satisfied with that and he was glad. She was watching him now though like she was waiting for something only he didn't know what. She was staring at his lips like she thought something else might come from them, but he wasn't sure what else to say. It was only as her eyes pulled away from his lips and back to his watchful gaze, that he caught a glimpse of her tongue flitting out and then something in the way she drew in her bottom lip and bit down, he realized what it was she was waiting for. She was waiting for him to kiss her and god help him, miracle or not, he wouldn't know how to even start. He felt a lump in his throat that he couldn't swallow past and he felt an insane urge to clear his throat and in the end he did, and of course then the mood was broken and he was sort of relieved that he didn't have to figure out how to kiss her. But just as much, he was disappointed too and that confused him even more.

He didn't know what this "together" of his and Beth's meant and what all it entailed but the more that he thought about it, the more he realized that in those movies where the girl actually lived and the guy did get the girl, one thing always happened. They kissed. _Huh_. The thought sucker punched him. Because that led to a natural progression of thought. Sometimes in those movies when the couple realized how they felt about one another, they didn't just kiss. They did other stuff, the kind of stuff that entailed the removal of clothing and bodies pressed together.

It was a lot to take in, this thing they were figuring out, and it was all tangled in his mind but as he looked at Beth, she reached over and placed her hand in his, her delicate fingers weaving through his much larger ones, things unraveled a bit and he was able to see that what he felt for her, though complicated, was something that couldn't be put to one emotion. It wasn't just love or something like it or the fact that he was just figuring out that he did actually have sexual feelings towards another person that he'd never had before. It was all of it together and it was confusing as hell but Beth seemed to understand that and she communicated it to him in the gentle squeeze of his fingers entwined with hers.

It eased something in his chest and she looked directly at him as she spoke. "I'm scared too Daryl, but it's okay. We'll figure it out. Together." She smiled at him, a smile meant to encourage and it did, it coaxed a genuine smile out of him.

Her heart nearly stopped with the way he was smiling at her and she thought she'd have to do it more often, make Daryl Dixon smile. Because her knees felt like jelly and her heart was hammering in her chest and she decided that it was not an altogether unpleasant feeling. He answered her with a squeeze of his hand against hers, their fingers clasped. "Together." And if his voice had dropped and was rough with emotion, she wouldn't draw attention to it.

They reluctantly dropped their hands a few moments later and set about the task of their evening meal and ate by the dim light of the lantern. Daryl insisted on first watch and Beth readily agreed. The fresh air from the ride and the workout her muscles got mixed with the quiet confessions of a girl and a guy embarking on a journey together had her feeling sated and drowsy like she hadn't in a long time.

Daryl didn't make it real obvious but she could tell he wanted her to curl up beside him like she had the previous nights, even if those were borne of different circumstances. So as she crawled beside him, it wasn't that hard to pretend that it had always been this way between them. In a way it had. In a way, it was as if she'd always been meant to walk alongside this man, as if they'd always been together. It was the memory of the slide of Daryl's palm against her own and his squeeze back after he'd told her that he wanted to be with her that lulled her to a place where believed she could sleep. And though he hadn't kissed her, she knew she'd planted the seed. Daryl had to work through these things in his own time and he'd get there.

He waited a beat after she'd settled against him before reaching out a hand to the back of her head, smoothing his hand down to her neck, squeezing lightly, feeling her soft skin under his rough and callused fingers, it was a quiet unspoken assurance that he'd be right there when she woke up. She sighed and sidled closer and he couldn't help but smile that she was here beside him and he just let his palm rest there on her back, making slow circles, his rough skin catching on the fabric of her sweater. He was nearly overwhelmed with a feeling of complete contentment. She was here with him. His living, breathing miracle and what's more, they'd declared what they were. Not in so many words as it turned out. Just one. _Together_. It summed up all he carried in his heart and soothed all the hurt places, sealing up all the cracks where before he'd been so empty without her. He felt whole again. She was right beside him and he was gonna make damn sure she stayed that way.

It had been a good idea he'd had to come out here on their own. It was just what she had needed. Hell, it was what they had both needed. It was funny that they'd had to leave the confines of the walls they'd been in together with so many people, especially all the people that were their own family, to finally admit that they wanted more. That they wanted to be together. She guessed, given Daryl's overall reticence to share his emotions, they had to be alone, away from all of that, to actually figure out that it was just the two of them, that it would _always_ be the two of them. Together. Facing the world.

The dead might roam beyond these cabin walls and these walls might be smaller and narrower than the walls they had left earlier today, but she felt safer here beside Daryl than she had at the safe zone. And if that was strange, she didn't care. She always dreaded sleep because she was so scared she'd slip back into her nightmares, only maybe she'd slip back into the waking kind where she was still at Grady and Daryl was still out there somewhere.

As she fell asleep, she knew somehow that this night would be different and she'd sleep well and it would be a dreamless sleep. Unless of course, a certain handsome redneck crept into her dreams to steal a kiss. And that, Beth decided with a quiet sigh, she wouldn't mind at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So? Too fluffy? Not enough? Let me know in the comments.....xoxoxo


	8. "You Know"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the one I waited so long to write. Daryl and Beth find something pretty special on their run. But they stumble upon something else even better. ;)

"Daryl, wake up!" He was startled awake by the sound of Beth's urgent whispering and her shaking his foot, none too gently he might add and the old Daryl would have barked at her to leave him be while he got himself together but that was the old Daryl and he stretched for a minute before opening one eye and peering at her. He could tell by her whisper and the tone of her voice that it wasn't urgent in the sense of an emergency; but that she was excited about something. He recognized the tone and it brought him back to the time she'd found two candy bars in back of a freezer in a house they'd scavenged. There she'd stood, a kitchen full of long rotted food and two dead walkers dispatched on the floor at her feet and he'd never forget the look on her face as she tore open one of the candy bars and handed him the other one. "Look what I found!" She'd exclaimed her eyes full of wonder and smile shining so bright he'd had to take a step back for a minute.

She was looking at him like that right now and it hit him the same way, like a punch to the gut because she was so damn beautiful, even with her hair still tousled from sleep, even with her scars, maybe even _because_ of them. Just something raw in that kind of beauty. _Her_ kind of beauty. He sat up and ran a hand over his face. "What's got you smilin' like the cat ate the canary this mornin'?"

She was laughing and he just stared at her wondering how in the whole damn universe she was alive and with him and she was so pretty and hell, he could get used to waking up to a smile like that. Especially since he knew it was meant for him.

"It's early. But just come with me. I promise it's worth it." She sounded confident and if Beth thought whatever it was that had drawn her out of bed at the crack of dawn was worthy, he was guessing he'd think it was pretty special too.

* * *

As it turned out, he did think it was special for at the edge the clearing where the little shack they'd slept in sat, there was a horse grazing near the tree-line. It was beautiful and majestic looking and even though Daryl knew next to nothing about horses and what was purebred and what wasn't, he could tell by the way this horse carried itself that it had cost someone a pretty penny back when shit like money meant something. The fact that the horse was alive was something of a miracle to him and he couldn't help but compare it to the miracle beside him who was tugging on his vest from where they were crouched in the bushes so as not to spook the animal.

"It knows we're here. It knows something is anyway." Beth whispered from beside him and he had to wonder for a minute if she was one of those damn animal whisperers. Maybe she was. Maybe if she'd gone to the door when that dog showed up at the funeral home everything would have turned out different. The dog had just run away from Daryl, likely scared that he was one of the things that he'd been trying to avoid and stay away from to stay alive. Could be that a walker took his eye.

"Mmmhmmm." He murmured his agreement. He could tell by the way the horse's ears were pricked forward that it was listening to what was going on around it.

Beth reached into her pack at her feet and he watched her with open curiosity. He'd never seen her grab it on their way out the door but maybe she'd gotten it earlier and he wondered how long she had been up and him completely unaware that she'd gone outside. He must have slept really sound. He tried to think at what point he had fallen asleep and the last thing he remembered was her telling him it was her turn to keep watch and lying down to close his eyes for a few minutes. What happened after was a blur. That had been roughly four hours ago and he couldn't recall ever having slept as good as he just had.

He watched her as she dug around in her backpack and brought out an apple and then flashed a smile at him. This was the Beth Greene he remembered. This smile was the one that had reminded him that miracles existed and maybe, just maybe they could get another one.

"You good with horses?" His voice was gruff and just enough of a whisper but even so, it was a deeper timbre than Beth's lilting soprano and the horses ears pricked a little further forward, indicating that it could hear them. Still, it hadn't bolted yet and he took that as a sign of encouragement.

She snorted. "I'd like to think so, yes. I tamed Nellie myself. She'd come from a home where she was neglected. She didn't trust anybody but me."

Now it was Daryl's turn to snort. "Pshh, tame huh?" He remembered that horse throwing him damn near over a cliff, well the closest thing you could get to a cliff in backwoods southern Georgia. That horse was anything but tame.

She giggled and the horse's ears pricked up again and it trotted a few paces to the left where it then resumed its quiet grazing. Beth saw the horse get nervous and she reminded herself to be quieter. Lowering her voice, she leaned close to Daryl as she whispered. "I heard all about how you stole my horse Mr. Dixon." Just in slant of her eyes and the way she blinked up at him with that wide smile on her face as she said " _Mr. Dixon_ " nearly knocked him on his ass where he was crouched beside her, one arm braced on his knee. He'd never flirted a day in his life but he knew when someone was flirting with him and the look Beth had in her eye could only be described as flirtatious.

Before he could do something crazy and flirt back, she dropped the apple and it fell right between the two of them and they both leaned over at the same time to retrieve it. His hand closed over it and hers on the other side of it, her fingers brushing against his and before he knew it they were toppled over on their knees each of them holding one side of an apple that was only really big enough for one hand. Daryl's hand was gently gripping her arm just above her wrist. All it would take is a gentle tug on her arm and she'd be that much closer and it would be so easy to just kiss her. Just do it already instead of just thinking about it and he couldn't take his eyes from her lips as everything in the world seemed to narrow down to just the two of them held suspended in the moment and his attention was drawn up to where her gaze met his and he could hear her breathing mixed with his own. Tentatively, to test the waters to see if she'd pull away, he did tug her arm just so and she was closer than ever, her blue eyes staring up at him, pinning him down, almost willing him to close that final few inches between them. He could no longer just hear her breathing, which was ragged by this point, as if she was afraid to breathe very deep (and he definitely understood that feeling) and he could feel her breath warm on his neck.

The soft bray of the horse closer than where they'd last observed startled both of them and they slowly broke apart, their focus now drawn to the horse that, while they were lost in their moment, had crept closer to check them out. Daryl shelved the thought that he'd been about to kiss her for later and he didn't move and just watched his partner take the apple in her hand and gently toss it in the direction of the animal, making certain it knew she meant it no harm.

Beth stood up and waited while the horse sniffed the air around the apple where it had fallen at her feet. She could tell, now that it was closer, that it was a female; a mare just like Nellie. But where Nellie had been dappled in varying shades of grey, this horse was a beautiful sorrel colored American Quarter Horse, well bred and well raised it appeared. She was just skittish and who could blame her with the dead roaming around and she could see a long scar on her hindquarters, a walker scratch no doubt if she was judging by the ragged edges of the long since healed wound.

The mare nudged the apple with her nose and then deeming it safe fare, she curled her lips back from her teeth and opened her mouth to retrieve the apple off the ground, the resounding crunch and slurp of the apple the only sound other than her and Daryl's breathing in watchful waiting of the horse's next move. The mare heartily finished the treat Beth had offered it and eyed her as if judging if she was worth the risk of finding out if she had any more fruit in her bag.

Beth reached into her bag, dug out another apple, and held it out and she knew she didn't move one muscle on her body or breathe one breath into her lungs while she waited an interminable amount of time for the horse to decide whether or not to trust her. She didn't have to worry about Daryl. He, better than anyone, knew the importance of being quiet in situations like this, especially in not spooking animals.

She watched, mesmerized, as the mare gently nudged the apple and her muzzle brushed against the back's of Beth's fingers. Beth held out her palm, balancing the apple in the center and the animal was quiet, reverent almost, as it took her peace offering right out of her hand. Beth's eyes flew to Daryl's who was watching her with something akin to pride and Lord, if the way he was looking at her didn't take her breath away, she didn't know what did. She hadn't even had time to process the fact that he was getting ready to kiss her a few moments ago. Or at least it had sure seemed like he was going to before the horse had interrupted them. It seemed that happened to them a lot. Getting interrupted. First with the dog and then with the walkers and now with the horse.

The horse brayed softly and dipped its head down where Beth's hand hung suspended where it had taken the apple from her, its ear knocking against her hand and Beth took the hint and a soft laugh found its way out of her mouth as she smiled up at Daryl who stood beside her just watching.

Daryl observed the whole exchange with Beth and the horse with something like awe. He'd never met anyone like Beth and she had a way with Judith like no one else did and he should have guessed that she'd have a way with animals too. Hell, he figured when it came right down to it, she had a way with him more than anybody. She'd gotten him to open up about his past and had convinced him there were good people in the world. He believed every word of her constant tirade that good people still existed because he was looking right at one of them. He knew Beth Greene was the best of anyone left alive in this world gone to shit. Her sweet talking the horse into eating out of the palm of her hand, well that was just further proof that she was special and there was no one else quite like her.

"Maybe this horse'll be nicer than that demon horse of yours." He said and still stood back from the animal. Just because it liked Beth didn't mean it would feel the same about him.

"Stop." She admonished gently though she was still grinning at him and her eyes still held a hint of that teasing glint. "Nellie would have been nicer to you if you'd have been properly introduced." She said primly. "Horses are social animals. Here, give me your hand." She held out her free hand, the other still freely stroking the horse's head and it wasn't complaining none so it must like being touched. He couldn't blame the horse one damn bit with fingers as soft as hers and her touch gentle and light and made you feel all warm on the inside.

He held out his hand, eyeing her warily. "This horse bites me and I'm blamin' you Greene."

She giggled again and he thought how he really liked her laugh and wished he could make her laugh all the time. Something about her laugh made that warm feeling bubble up even warmer until it felt like the vice around his insides was going to squeeze him until he burst or he did something. _Like kiss her_ , the voice in the back of his head urged again.

"She ain't gonna bite. Do you trust me?" She looked right at him as she took his hand in hers, grasping his fingers and sliding her thumb over his knuckles, those baby blues holding him down while she waited on his answer.

Did he trust her? He'd blindly follow her anywhere. Hell, he figured he'd followed her all over half of Georgia trying to find her. Because she'd convinced him there were good people. She'd convinced him that he was one of those she considered good. He trusted her. He trusted her like he'd never trusted another human being. He only nodded because it was all he was capable of in that moment.

But she knew. She always did and she always saw all the things he tried to convey in his gaze. She heard every word he said but more importantly she heard all the stuff in between that he didn't say and that was where the crux of his feelings lay where Beth was concerned.

Her tiny hand guided his much larger one to the horse's muzzle. "Just nice and easy. They like their ears and mouth rubbed too." She demonstrated as she slid her hand up the horses head to its ears and it nickered appreciatively nudging its head into Daryl's hand as he stroked it. He couldn't help but laugh, a little mystified as he looked at Beth as she marveled at the horse.

"It's somethin' how she just seems to trust us, huh?" She gazed up at Daryl and she didn't think she'd ever seen this particular expression on his face. It was like the night at the funeral home all over again, except more intense and her breath did a sort of skip in her throat as she studied him looking at her, his hair still a little wild from sleep but those too-long bangs hanging right in his gaze and she longed to reach out and brush it back from his eyes but she didn't feel free to be that familiar with him. Yet.

"It's somethin' alright." Now it was his turn to pin her down with his gaze. He couldn't take his eyes off her if he wanted to, the way her hair was shining reflected off the sun rising behind her and he knew he'd never seen anything prettier than the girl he loved standing in front of him. _The girl he loved_. The thought both surprised him and didn't. He loved her, of course he did. That's what this was all about and he knew that it was heading towards this even if he hadn't known what to call it. Until now.

He should have been nervous. He should have been shaking, but he wasn't. And this time there was no dog. And no walkers. And the horse, as if sensing the moment, eased away from them, not too far and Daryl could tell she was still checking them out, but maybe now it was in the sense to make sure they didn't disappear and leave her all alone in the world again.

Daryl purposely brushed his hands off on his pants and he looked at Beth, very sure of what he was about to do even though he had no clue _how_ to do it. How to kiss the girl you loved. He took one stride towards her, which was all it took to close the rest of the distance between them.

Beth watched as Daryl cleaned off his hands and then looked back up at her, his gaze purposeful and Lord, he looked like he was going to kiss her again. She tried not to hope and tried not to breathe, tried not to do anything at all as he got closer and closer.

He wasn't sure how this was supposed to work but in all those movies where the guy and the girl ended up in each other's arms, where it seemed to start was with well-placed hands. He wasn't sure where he was supposed to put his so he went with what was natural, what felt right, and his hands came up to her cup her hips on either side, gripping lightly as he studied her face, taken in for a moment at how she seemed to absorb his every move, as if she could feel the atmosphere changing between them, and it was. The air snapped almost electric between them and he was suddenly wide awake and yet caught in some dream state all at the same time and he credited that to the way Beth's gaze seemed to cling to his lips and how her tongue came out to trace the seam of her lips, like she'd already guessed that he was going to kiss her. Good. That meant she wanted it as much as he did and it let him know he didn't have to come right out and ask. He could just do. Actions were always his strong suit over words. He used that to his advantage now.

In the end, it was the knowledge that he loved her, being able to name it thus, that propelled him forward and had instinct taking over. That he loved her wholly, completely, every single cell in him existed to love her, and one hand stayed on her hip, tracing the gentle swell above the waistband of her jeans with his thumb, and the other came up to the side of her head, winding into her hair, his fingers teasing through and as if in slow motion he brought his mouth to her mouth as her eyes fluttered closed and his lips met hers. In that moment, that one moment where time was suspended somewhere in the breath between them, their lips pressed together, he knew he could die, knowing that he had loved her.

Beth thought kissing Daryl was like no other experience in her life. It couldn't even come close to kissing Jimmy or even Zach. His lips were pressed to hers and though she'd kissed Zach deeper than this, this more innocent soft sliding of Daryl's lips against hers, their lips molding to fit the other, this felt far more intimate and meant more than anything she'd shared with anyone before him. Because this was different. She was kissing Daryl, a man she loved so completely, so wondrously and that made all the difference in the world between kissing Zach or Jimmy and kissing Daryl. Vaguely, she could feel his thumb rubbing her hip in rhythm to the movement of their lips against one another. She needed to be closer and her hands snaked up around his neck, her fingers curling through the hair at the nape of his neck. She wanted to melt herself into him, just let osmosis take over and she poured every molecule she had into kissing him. And as he finally, reluctantly, pulled his lips from hers, breaking their first kiss, she knew that she'd never want anyone else's lips against hers again. No one's but Daryl's.

She looked at him and he looked so surprised at what had just happened, so naturally, so unrehearsed, she couldn't help but smile and she felt the heat in her cheeks as she realized again that this was Daryl she was sharing all these intimate moments with. It was Daryl she was opening up her heart to and it was Daryl who was opening his heart to her. There was a moment where they just stood there staring at each other, a goofy, happy smile stretched across her face and he simply smiled back she knew she was having one of those perfect moments and for a tiny second in some wrinkle in time they existed in a place where it was only the two of them and there wasn't any such thing as the living who ate the dead, or men who preyed upon the weak, seeking to take from them whatever humanity they had left. For just that sliver of time,it seemed like maybe they could have that, just her and Daryl.

As if on cue, the horse nickered softly. "Come on Greene, let's go see if we can find something fittin' for this horse to eat." Daryl smiled at her and Lord, help, he looked so good when he smiled and her knees actually felt like they went weak. He reached out his hand and she placed her hand into his and this time, it was Daryl that laced their fingers together. She looked back at the horse briefly.

"She won't go far. She knows she's got a good gig with you giving her apples and what not."

She nodded and grinned, stepping away from what she would always consider the most magical spot in the universe and she didn't care if that made her sound stupid. As she came up beside him, she nudged him with her hip. She was so proud of him for kissing her before she had the chance to kiss him. Proud and a little surprised. She'd always thought she'd have to make the first move.

"What?" He glanced at her sideways and she didn't miss the tiny smirk on his face. He was proud of himself and it showed.

"You know." She said and it felt like an echo of their conversation in the kitchen so long ago.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know what you're talkin' bout Greene." He reached over and gave her ponytail a quick, teasing tug.

"Oh no you don't, Mr. Dixon. You know exactly what I'm talkin' about. I just want to know how long you've been thinkin' about doing that." She grinned at him because he was still smirking as they made their way back into the shack to gather their things.

He was quiet for a minute and then he turned to face her before he crossed the threshold to the cabin. "Longer than you might think." His reply was honest and he couldn't help but add as an afterthought. "You might also wanna know that I'm thinkin' about doin' it again."

"Oh." Was her only reply as her face flushed and she smiled softly and ducked her head, but just before that he caught the way her eyes went a little wide and it made him smile even more that way she all the sudden went quiet and if her one syllable response reminded him of a time when they hadn't gotten to finish their conversation, well, that was fitting, he guessed. She'd been sort of speechless then too.

He turned on his heel and he couldn't help the chuckle at her shocked expression. So that's how you got a Greene girl to be quiet. He'd have to remember that in the future.


	9. "Wanna Cool Off?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Daryl find a lake and well, things are supposed to get cooler, but instead they heat up.

_Unsettled._

Ever since he'd kissed her that's how he had been feeling. Just unsettled and unsure and you'd think he'd be used to it by now because that's the way it had been before between them; just everything a swirl of confusion churning in his gut, but it wasn't a bad feeling. It was just different and if there was one thing he'd learned from Beth Greene was not to be afraid of the different and new. To not accept things at face value, to really try and figure out the worth of something. God knew he'd discounted her. He felt guilty sometimes for what he had thought of her before, when it was just the two of them against the world, not knowing if the rest of them had survived.

He'd thought she was weak. He'd seen some of her pluck before the fall of the prison but he'd also seen her break down a few times and it wasn't until they were standing in front of the broken pieces of someone else's lives, that shine shack in the middle of goddamn nowhere Georgia, same as what he'd come from, that he realized that she was taking no shit from him. And she didn't. She gave as good as she got and when he gave her hell that day, all those spiteful things he'd said in a fit of moonshine rage, the fumes of their frustration igniting words they should have never said maybe. She should have walked away from him and never looked back. He knew by then she could survive on her own. He guessed then was when it started to scare him that maybe he needed her a lot more than she needed him.

And he'd been fighting against the tides of his doubts ever since. Especially now that she had been handed back to him, because someone up there must have had pity on his miserable existence, because existing in a world without Beth Greene wasn't living at all. It wasn't even existing. It wasn't Heaven and it wasn't Hell exactly because even in hell, there wouldn't be numbness. There'd be pain and searing burn and then he started to think he was wrong. Maybe he had died in that hallway too and this _was_ his hell. He was relegated to a life without her and that was his purgatory of hell on earth. A deep underworld veiled with sadness and the pall of hopelessness hung over every inch of the wasted landscape she left behind. Sometimes he thought _he_ was that wasteland.

They'd had to leave the bike in a thicket shortly after leaving the tiny shack. It had just sputtered and wouldn't restart no matter how much he tried and he'd tinkered with it over thirty minutes before declaring it a lost cause. Clogged filter had everything so gummed up he couldn't make heads or tails of anything. Plus he was lacking in tools. His best bet was to hide it well and come back to get it later. As it was, they needed a vehicle or something to train that horse so they could ride it, so that was what had them headed for the nearest town he could think of but it was a much longer trip on foot.

So here he was tracking her through the backwoods of a different state entirely and there wasn't any place he'd rather be in the whole wide world, except he couldn't make sense of this shift in their relationship. Sure, he'd thought she was pretty before, couldn't hardly take his eyes off her then either, but _this_? This was something different entirely and the shift was palpable, like sinking down into something and you weren't sure if you'd be able to get back up again. Weren't even sure if you wanted to, even if it meant the shifting thing you were settling into was like a quicksand, just seeping in at the sides until you were pulled under.

There was only one difference. He should have been suffocating being that close to her. Should have been unable to breathe because anyone who knew him, knew he wasn't all that big on people touching him, but instead it was the opposite. He felt like when he was that close to her, breathing her in, his lips on hers, and her warm breath in his mouth, he could finally draw air. Like she was the air he needed all along and he just didn't know it until that moment.

So 'unsettled' was what he felt because all he had wanted to do since he'd taken his lips off of hers was do it again. Even now as she dropped back to walk beside him (which was kind of a shame since he had been enjoying the view), he considered tugging on her hand and pulling her around into his arms so he could kiss her again. Just watch that crimson creep up on her cheeks, feel the warm of her face under his thumb, her soft plump lips locked under his and he realized with a certainty that he wanted to kiss her deeply, put his tongue in her mouth and explore her and taste her and God, what the fuck was wrong with him? He'd never been this way about her before and one taste now and he'd fucking lost his mind.

Taking a deep breath, he forged ahead a bit and tried to ignore the churning in his gut when he heard her little sigh. Like she had known that he was trying to put distance between them. But she didn't push because she never did. That was just the way she was. As much as he wanted to kiss her until her toes curled, he knew he needed a bit to process what was going on between them. Thankfully she seemed to understand it as she hung back.

* * *

_Giddy._

She had been trying to figure out how she felt ever since their kiss and that's the thing that best described it and she wondered that she'd never felt this way when she'd kissed Jimmy or even Zach. Those kisses had been fine. Those kisses had been chaste, first puppy love kisses. But kissing Daryl? That had been _good_. So good. So good that all she could think about was that she wanted to do it again.

It was more than that though. She'd always been sort of aware of Daryl before but ever since those last few days that they spent together when she had noticed a sort of shift in their relationship, she'd seen him differently. Before he was Daryl, the guy who was teaching her all kinds of things, things she needed to survive and somewhere along the line she just sorted to see him as something else. Someone else. There was something rare and beautiful and raw about him and she couldn't help feeling drawn to him.

And then to have him to kiss her like he had, so soft, so gentle, achingly so, just made a flutter start in her heart that she couldn't quite get a handle on. Being around him made those little flutters feel like the gentle flittering of a moth's wings but when he kissed her? It felt as if the moth had turned into a butterfly, wilding flapping its wings against its cage. Just a moment of his lips on hers had her heart doing somersaults and his hands threaded through her hair had nearly been her undoing. She sighed. Thinking about kissing him like this wasn't helping any. She knew he wanted to kiss her again too. She could see it in the way his eyes slid to her every now and again. More than that, it was _where_ his eyes came to rest. Directly on her lips.

It had been a fairly quiet morning except for having to kill several walkers about an hour after they'd left the bike. A dozen or so walkers came stumbling from the trees, but just like before, they'd gotten into formation and dispensed with them in no time.

He had been very quiet in the last hour of their trek. They were walking through some pretty rough terrain and though just days before it had seemed that fall was arriving shortly, now it was so hot if she didn't know better she would think it was the middle of July. She picked up her hair from her neck and wished for the fiftieth time her ponytail elastic hadn't snapped and broken or she'd brought more. She was sweating something awful and her heavy hair sticking to her neck and down her back wasn't helping. She'd shed her jacket a while ago and it was stuffed in her backpack and if she didn't cool down soon her shirt was going in there with it, the tiny tank top with no bra she had on be damned. She figured Daryl had seen enough of her that there wasn't too much mystery between them now.

Still, a little shiver went through her at the thought of his eyes falling onto her in that way like he had in the exam room when she was wearing nothing more than a paper gown.

Daryl's voice broke through her thoughts all the sudden and she flushed. "I know you ain't cold Greene." His eyes were a kaleidoscope of curiosity and fascination and she noticed that they were a little darker than usual.

"Definitely not cold. It's hotter than hell out here." She said, fanning her face. He'd caught her in the act of fantasizing about him.

He gestured with a nod of his head. "Wanna cool off?"

Beth gasped at what lay before them as they crested the hill they'd been climbing the last five minutes. Just in the valley below was a pristine lake spread out with woods flanking it on every side except a small clearing that allowed for a dirt path leading up to it. It was an answer to prayer and she looked back at him a minute, her eyes asking him the question she already knew the answer to.

"Go on." He waved her ahead and she beamed at him. She had her shirt over her head before she even got to the water.

* * *

He watched her with a smile on his face and a lightness welling up in him. He couldn't make sense of how one petite girl with hair the color of sunshine in May and a smile just as bright to match it could get him all twisted up inside but that's just how he felt as he watched her skip down to the water, his eyes torn between scanning the tree-line around the lake and falling to rest on her pert ass and all the delicious moves it made on her way to the water. He followed a little slower watching in awe as she nonchalantly ripped her shirt over her head, leaving her in that nothing little tank top she was so fond of and by the time she reached the water she was already working on her boots.

He came up behind her, straining to keep a proper distance so she could do what really he'd watched her do a couple dozen times before. Except this time, it was different. And his mind was open. Definitely open to all sorts of possibilities and new things but God, was this ever a whole new _different_ for him. She cocked her head to the side, her hair all wild and sticking to her, her sun-kissed cheeks highlighting that smile she had directed his way as she threw her boots at him where they landed at his feet. She giggled. Fucking giggled and turned back around to fumble with the button on her jeans. If she was as caught up in the moment, she sure as shit didn't show it. As it was, he might have to turn around in a minute though he knew she was wearing panties under her tattered jeans. It was more that he was sure he was going to embarrass himself if she caught sight of the slight bulge in his pants. She would never say anything. That wasn't how she was. It was just her _knowing_ that his mind rapid-firing all sorts of things. Knowing that he wanted her. God, did he ever. His eyes came to rest on her ass as she shimmied those pants the rest of the way off. She was wearing a pair of worn out, faded red panties, a strange contrast to the pale pink tank top that she was wearing. She tested the water with her toe and turned to him, tossing her hair back over her shoulder.

"It feels amazin'! You should come in." She stood there for a minute, dragging her big toe through the water and he saw her shiver, just like he had earlier.

"The water cold Greene?" His eyes met hers and she flushed and ducked her eyes to the ground and a shy smile crept up on her face before she finally looked up at him, her big doe eyes seeming to swallow up the hues of the sky and the bright blue of the water, a crystalline sea of curiosity and he was spellbound.

Just like that, he was drawn in and there was nothing else but her and him. Everything suspended, time, matter, space, and she shook her head slowly, those baby blues pinning him down. He couldn't have moved if he tried in that moment. "Not at all, Mr. Dixon."

He felt a hitch in his breath and _fuck_ she _had_ to know what that did to him. That teasing little glint in her eye, that small smile, when she said his name like that. Like it was something that _should_ fall from her perfect mouth. Like it didn't have the stain of booze and violence and shame attached to it. He cleared his throat. "Go on ahead. I'm gonna-". He didn't have not one damn excuse not to join her in the water.

"You're gonna what?" God she was pretty standing there, hair a golden halo around her, the sunlight shadow-boxing all her features until she was this mythical creature, chin jutted up, the challenge in her voice clear even as she knew what his answer would be all along. Just a little water nymph wanting him to join in her afternoon swim, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

 _Fucking hell_.

"Gonna take a piss." There, well that had shut her up another time. Maybe it would work now.

He turned to leave and heard her giggle as she watched him go.

"Chicken-shit." She called out just loud enough for him to hear and the next thing her heard was the gentle splash as she went under the water.

Okay so maybe sometimes she pushed a little. Maybe sometimes that's what he needed.

* * *

Beth lazed on the bank, her jacket spread beneath her as she waited for Daryl to come back from well, taking care of business, and got to work on wringing the lake water out of her hair. She hadn't had soap but who cared. It had felt glorious stripping down in this heat and cooling the burn that had settled onto her skin when the sun rose it seemed and it still showed no signs of letting up. She had shivered a bit when she'd stepped out of the water but it seemed she'd be dried off in no time, the sun beating down as it was.

Finally.

He stepped out of the tree line and held up a sizeable rabbit by the feet. So he'd managed to snag dinner while she'd had her little swim. Figured he'd find some excuse, any excuse to keep from having to join her in the water. He came back over and sat down beside her, tucking the rabbit into his pack.

"We'll cook it tonight when we make camp." He said, looking over at her and she didn't miss the way his eyes traveled over her, resting just a hair longer on her chest as they raked back up to rest on her face. She noticed of course because she had been watching for it. To see if he would react and well, didn't her Mama always tell her to be careful what she wished for?

Lord, help, she saw the way his chest puffed up with surprise and stuttered in a frenzied moment of air hunger when his eyes fell on her breasts. She knew you could probably see right through her tank, but she was fascinated to no end by how his lip had come to curl over his bottom lip just for a second in the same second his breath hitched and he swallowed thickly before he averted his gaze out to the water.

It wasn't much but it was a small victory. She at least knew he was thinking about her in that way, even if he may never say the words. But he didn't have to. His eyes held all of his tells and they always had.

"Bout ready to go?" She noticed that he didn't look her way, just focused his gaze on the treeline. Which would be fine, except he was doing that thing with his jaw when he was thinking really hard on something.

She smoothed her hand over her ankle. It still gave her trouble some days and today was no exception especially with all the walking they had done. "Yeah, guess so." She dusted off her hands and pushed herself off the ground and turned to reach for her pants. Her panties should be dry enough and besides that it's not like they could dry all that much with all this oppressive humidity.

On turning back around her ankle tweaked and she reached out to steady herself, her hand coming naturally to rest on Daryl's shoulder. Well this was awkward. Her face flushed bright red and if she thought the day was hot before, well that was nothing compared to how she felt when she was crotch to face with Daryl Dixon and he reached out to steady her, his palms coming flush with the backs of her knees. For a moment, neither of them moved. She didn't know who was breathing more shallowly her or him.

"Sorry." Her voice was a strained whisper as her fingers gripped his shoulder, the leather of his vest warm, smooth under the tips of her fingers. More than anything in that moment she wanted to know what he was thinking, his face just inches away from her like that.

Daryl was having a heart attack. Or at least that's what it felt like. When Beth got up from the ground and lost her balance, he'd reached out to steady her and now his hands were gripping the backs of her knees to keep her from toppling over and those very thin, very worn out panties were just inches from his face.

He knew he should move. Thought she probably knew it too. This thing that was so palpable between them. This inexplicable pull toward the other seemed to now be getting some help from the very laws of physics. And then she was saying she was sorry. Wasn't that _his_ line?

After it was all over, Beth wasn't sure who had finally moved first, they had moved so fast. Instead of focusing on how hot her face was and how she'd begun to feel a sort of ache low in her belly, she pulled on her jeans and stuffed everything she could in her backpack. She pulled her t-shirt back over her head and instantly missed the cool breeze on her skin. She tried arranging her hair into some semblance of a bun but it was just too heavy with all the water weighing her hair down.

Finally, she turned to Daryl and her eyes met his. Neither of them said anything, but it was all there. A bit of shyness. A lot of curiosity. But the _heat?_. Oh lord, she was unbearably hot and she was starting to think it didn't have anything to do with the temperature.

"Ready?" She said brightly, smiling at him softly. To break the ice. To make him smile. God, anything to kill this unbearable feeling. Whatever it was, just making it seem like the air all around the two of them was charged, like they were held in by some force they couldn't see but also couldn't penetrate either.

They walked back up the path that took them to the lake, the sun starting to lower in the sky.

"Best get a move on or we'll be forced to camp out in the open. If we hurry we might be able to reach the town by nightfall." He put his hand on her shoulder, gently edging her forward as she turned to leave, him following behind her. Her pack feeling like it weighed a ton and the memory of their close encounter at the lake in the forefront of her mind, they made their way down the side of the road, hoping they could find some shade in this blasted heat. It was at least 93 degrees outside but being around Daryl made it feel like it was 193. Given the looks he'd been giving her all afternoon, he was feeling the exact same way. She wasn't sure exactly how it made her feel but giddy didn't describe that at all. _That_ was something entirely different. A very _good_ kind of different.


	10. "Like We're Drinking the Stars"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Daryl have to camp out in a van for the night and they find a secret stash for some newly drunken fun. Think the trunk scene with alcohol! xoxoxo

 

 

There hadn't been shade in the last hour, of that Beth was certain. She had long since given up on modesty and shucked her shirt and stuffed it in her pack along with her jacket. It was nearly full to bursting at this point and she was strongly considering cutting her jeans off at mid thigh and hope for new pants later.

The gurgled growl of a walker behind her and to her left had her spinning and acting purely on instinct and plunging the knife into the eye of the thing that used to be a woman just like her, except the blonde hair was matted with blood, looked like a botched suicide half the right side of her skull blown off. Her knife got stuck on the brow bone and she kicked her leg forward to brace her foot against the walker's chest and with the right amount of pressure, the knife popped free with a squelch and a gush of oozing black fluid. Grimacing, she spun around to catch the next threat and came face to face with Daryl, huffing and puffing his eyes full of concern.

"You okay?" He looked over her shoulder at the felled walker and she swore a shudder went through him. She knew what he saw. Another dead girl.

_I know you look at me and see another dead girl._

And that was the worst of it, the past seemed to come back and slap them right in the face with the evidence that the worst could really happen. It could and it did. She almost _was_ a dead girl. To Daryl for a really long time, she was a dead girl and the truth was, she wasn't sure she was fully revived yet.

She took a deep breath as they cleared the forest they had been traipsing through the last hour and a half as it branched out into the outskirts of a small town.

"Seems deserted enough." Daryl remarked, stopping right at the treeline as they perused the landscape below them, broken down cars littered the area, dead bodies strewn about, and a small shopping center with three, maybe four stores. Just your typical apocalyptic snapshot.

Beth nodded. He was right. The town that lay in the valley below them looked like it had seen better days even before the world had gone to shit. They picked their way carefully down the embankment that then spilled out onto the pavement of the road that would lead them to the town. "Maybe it'll still have the stuff we need." His eyes met hers and she smiled softly.

"Mmmhmm. So if you were going this alone, how would you approach it?" He nodded towards the town and she got what he meant. He wanted to know how she would scavenge if she was alone. There had been one time before when she'd had to go scouting for supplies by herself. The car had broken down and Doc Edwards had gotten a nasty cut on his arm. They'd been afraid it would get infected or worse, get walker blood in it. Though Beth was immune, they could not assume Edwards would be or Morgan, for that matter. So Beth had gone in search of supplies, gauze, peroxide, and with extra luck some antibiotics. As it turned out, they'd hit the jackpot and she'd been able to find a farm with veterinary supplies tucked away in the back corner of a barn. She had been proud of the way she hadn't teared up though the place reminded her so much of home it made her physically ill and she thought maybe she finally got the meaning of the word homesick.

"I'd hang back and observe for a bit, make sure it wasn't too overrun and if there was any sign of people, I'd probably skip it altogether." She relayed the story of the farm then. How it had been a minimal risk situation and the only thing she had to lose was time but when weighed with risking one's life as the alternative, it had been worth the time she'd spent and then some. Those supplies had seen them through all the way to Alexandria.

Daryl nodded and made an approving noise in the back of his throat. "Well let's go then smarty pants."

"Did I get it right?" Beth couldn't keep the eagerness out of her voice and she swore she saw a ghost of a smile creep up on his lips.

Daryl just looked at her and smirked and she saw the way his eyes slid to her lips. She was getting so she knew all his tells and that meant he wanted to kiss her. Again. But just then, a flash of red above her caught her attention. There above them on the road sign into town was a collage of messages sent to family members, friends, loved ones that they'd lost, like a lost and found board. Pieces of cardboard, paper, t-shirts even; pinned up all over the sign of the town Green Hill, Virginia, Population 10,295.

Messages of the living to those they'd left behind. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe they weren't, but these were people looking for their family members, friends, loved ones, anyone they had known from their past life. Just one giant lost and found and it made her sad to know that some people on that board would never find their loved ones.

One in particular caught her attention. _"Lexi, go to Uncle Terry's. Love, April."_ She had no way of knowing it was true but something about it seemed like maybe the two girls were sisters. April had left a note for her lost sister. Maybe their uncle's house was a gathering place, an exodus for the rest of the family. But the point was that April had cared enough to leave a note for her sister.

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She didn't know if she was ready to talk about this. "I saw the sign. After we left the hospital, I saw the sign Maggie left for Glenn. It's one of the places I went trying to find all of you." Beth looked at him sideways and his jaw was twitching again and he'd pulled in his bottom lip, biting it thoughtfully, turning to look at her.

"Wondered if you might have." His response was noncommittal and something about it irked her.

"Tell me. Did she even try to find me?" She closed her eyes, willing his response to be anything but what she knew to be true. That Maggie had left the prison that day, had left her flesh and blood and hadn't looked back a moment since.

"No." One word, so simple and for once Daryl was glad he was a man of few words because that one word was enough. He wouldn't give her platitudes. He thought more of her than that and she'd never believe them anyway. He knew Maggie had her reasons for not trying to find Beth, but that's all they were to him, and likely to Beth too. Reasons. _Excuses_.

Beth nodded a couple of times and turned on her heel and stalked on ahead into the town. One thing about Greenes he'd already figured out a long time ago was they had tempers that ran hot, which really when he thought about it wasn't all that different than him. She was gonna blow, it was just a matter of when. So he let her stalk on ahead. He did get alarmed however and walked a bit faster as she unsheathed her knife. He scanned the area around them on the two lane road leading to the shopping center and he didn't see any overt threats. She leaned over with her knife and pulled her pants leg taut away from her leg and with one swift rip, she cut the whole leg of her pants from her body from mid thigh down. His steps slowed as he got closer to her and watched as she repeated the same procedure to the other one. One slice down the middle of each denim-clad leg and she pulled them away from her and folded them neatly, sheathed her knife and turned to him with tears bright in her eyes and shaking hands.

"We might be able to use them for bandages later." Her voice was shaky and he ached to make her stop hurting. Just pull her into his arms and soothe the shake from her limbs and the sadness from her eyes and the tremble of her lower lip? Well, he thought he could take care of that too.

Instead he reached out and took them from her, his fingers sliding against hers as he took them. He slipped the strap of the backpack from his shoulders and quickly stuffed the remnants of her pants inside.

"She found Glenn. And they're going to have a baby. A baby!" Her voice crept up a notch and he ached for the girl who had done nothing after they left the prison except try to find her sister. Try to find all of them, when all the while he had told her they were dead. All of them dead. And he'd been so wrong. She'd been right about all of it. He figured she was right about most things. Because she was smart. She always had been and her time away from all of them had only made her more intelligent and fierce. God, she was fierce and he loved that about her.

"She didn't think I'd make it. That's why she didn't look for me. She looked for _him_ because she knew he'd make it. I was wrong Daryl." She looked up at him suddenly, the tears now falling from her eyes slowly and it broke his heart. That Maggie had hurt her this way.

"You weren't. You weren't wrong about nothin' Beth." He let his pack fall to the ground, letting the crossbow follow. He didn't know what the hell he was doing but he knew if the situation was reversed she'd find a way to comfort him. With her, it meant hugging him from behind, holding his hand, something to let him know that she was here. _With_ _him_.

He reached out and slid her pack off one shoulder and then the other, while she watched him. Just watched him as he pulled her into his arms.

"You were the only one who never saw me as a dead girl, Daryl Dixon. Even my own sister counted me as dead." Beth whispered as she tucked herself into him, letting her head read on his chest, his hand coming up to cup her elbow on one side and the back of her head with the other. She pulled back to look at him.

"Thanks for not counting me out." He was looking down at her, much the same way he had in her prison cell so long ago, but there were subtle differences, his hands were surer, his grip firmer.

"Never. I never stopped looking for you. Never stopped searchin'. Even after I knew you were gone and couldn't find you, I still looked." He had seen her in every dead body, every walker he'd stumbled across. Every face of the dead had held some semblance of her, whether it was the dulled shade of blonde on a walker's head, or the sightless blue eyes that stared back at him, he'd seen her time and time again.

He looked into her eyes and saw all the life in there. All the life behind her and the life ahead of her and though he wanted to, he didn't kiss her. Not this time. It just didn't seem the right moment even if he didn't want it more than anything. She finally dried her eyes and stepped away from him and picked up her pack.

"You ready?" Her face lit up in a Beth Greene signature smile as she headed to the shopping center. That was his girl. Just carrying on like nothing ever happened.

"Just waitin' on you slow poke." He smirked and slipped past her and she stuck out her tongue. Just back to business as usual.

In the end, the town held little that they could really use. They'd found some canned goods, a couple of hunting knives, some random toiletries, and various other items. Beth switched some stuff around and got rid of some things she didn't think they'd really need. Fortunately she was able to find another pair of pants, a pair of camo cargo pants that had seen better days but they looked like they'd fit at least. Though she was much cooler, she was already regretting cutting up her jeans.

"I think there's another town about 30 miles up the road. Wanna make camp here and set out for it in the morning or see how far we get tonight?" Daryl asked as they came back out of the final building, having scavenged the contents and coming up nearly empty.

"Let's see how far we get. It's still another forty five minutes to dark. Maybe we'll find somethin'." Beth didn't want to spend another minute in Green Hill, Virginia where she had to wonder if two strangers had found one another. The only person she was glad she found at the moment was right next to her and that's all that mattered.

His blue eyes were focused in on her and her gaze was unwavering. He knew why she needed to get some distance between them and where they stood, even if he didn't voice it aloud. Beth loved that despite the time they'd spent apart, they hadn't lost their ability to communicate without words. Something about that just felt right. He nodded and they set off in the direction of the next town up, this one hopefully holding more than the last.

* * *

They finally came to stop, both of them near exhaustion. The sun had finally set and the temperate had cooled down some but the heat of the day had leeched what little bit of energy they had. It was almost full on dark by then and finally Daryl spotted a flash of blue through the tree line of the woods that the road cut straight through.

He nodded his head at it. "Found our camp for the night."

They'd done it many times, camping out on the inside of a car, van, truck, anything they could turn into shelter for the night. Turned out the flash of blue was an SUV. Nice one with a sunroof. It was obvious on getting into it that whoever left it hadn't planned on being gone long. It was parked under an outcropping of trees and bushes and they barely had enough room to get the door open to squeeze themselves inside. There was a full sack of boxes of food and two bottles of wine sitting in the front seat. The back windows were heavily tinted and Daryl wondered vaguely if it had even been legal. Daryl grunted as he crawled into the back and opened a can of pears they'd scavenged from one of the stores handing to Beth. She had fished out a plastic fork and dangled it between her fingers.

"Your fork, Mr. Dixon." She looked at him shyly as he gingerly plucked the fork from her fingers, knowing he would get her reference. And that damn Mr. again. He wondered if she knew what it did to him, just the way her eyes slightly downcast holding a bit of innocence that begged to be shed. He decided when she grinned at him as he took a deep breath that she knew alright. She knew.

By the time it was over, they shared a can of beans, the pears and then Beth dug out one of the bottles of wine. She held it up to the waning light outside the SUV where they were sitting cross legged in the back. He had to duck a bit to fit but it would do for the night. Long as a herd didn't come, they had a pretty good chance at getting some actual sleep on alternating shifts.

"Ouch." He looked up from his last bite of pears to see her face screwed up in pain.

"What is it? Are you scratched? Let me see." His voice was urgent, insistent as he grabbed her arm.

"Ouch. No Daryl. Just-" He had pulled her arm into his lap where he was turning it this way and that while she let him figure it out on his own. And then he realized his mistake and breathed a sigh of relief. It was like the biggest weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he figured out in that moment that since she was immune, he didn't have to worry about her getting scratched or bit. Girl had defied a bullet and defied the odds of making it out there with all the monsters that wanted to eat them too. She was fucking invincible.

"Sorry." He wanted to let go of her arm, he wanted to. But he didn't and her eyes met his. He stroked the pad of his thumb over the scar, feeling the gnarled flesh so like the own that covered his back. And she let him.

Her voice pulled him from his thoughts. "I think I'm sunburned." She gestured to the back of her neck and he motioned for her to turn around as he let go of her. "Guess I don't gotta worry about you gettin' bit no more. If there's a bright side to look on, I guess that's it." She laughed and as she turned her back to him, he saw the problem area. The back of her neck and all down her back was bright red from weathering the sun all day. Her arms were beet red too and her legs looked pretty pink as well. "Yep, you're burnt all right." He ghosted his fingertips across the skin of her neck. "Hot too."

She turned her head to look at him in that moment and it was like all his air had cut off. The burn of her skin, the implication of his words and the smoky look in her eyes was a pull neither of them could resist and she turned ever so slightly, into his arms, her lips just inches from his and he looked at her, all sun-kissed and he felt like he was the one who was sunburned. He was scorched by the heat in her gaze as he brought his lips to hers, just a soft ghost of a kiss and she tasted like the gritty sugary taste of the pears that they'd just eaten, her lips just barely moving against his and it was, well, nice. There could be worse things than kissing Beth Greene at the end of the world.

When he finally broke the kiss, there was a palpable weight in the air between them. "I think I saw some lotion in the glove box. Maybe it's got some aloe in it."

Beth only nodded and before he ducked into the front seat he saw the hint of a smile cross her lips as she pressed her fingers to them. There really weren't words for how it felt knowing he had put that smile there. That his kiss had put it there made him feel lighter than he had in forever.

"Found it." He held it up between two fingers and she plucked it from him so he could climb back into the back with her. He tried not to think about everything he'd ever heard about backseats of cars and girls.

Beth squeezed some of the lotion in the palm of her hand and began gingerly applying it to her arms and then moved to the back of her neck. She winced as her fingers came in contact with the sensitive flesh. Furthermore she was having a heck of a time reaching her back and that was the place that it seemed to burn the absolute most.

"Here, let me." Beth wordlessly turned around, her back facing him and she heard him open the lotion and heard the squelch of it as he squeezed some from the tube into his hand and heard the distinct sound of him rubbing his hands together, warming the lotion. The gesture struck her as thoughtful and tender, just like he always was with her.

She'd think back on the moment later and realize that it wasn't until he placed his palms on her back how very intimate the situation was. Enclosed in the back of a vehicle, half of her back bared to him while he smoothed lotion over her sun-parched skin. She couldn't help the shiver that traveled up her spine as he slid his callused hands over her back and up to her neck.

He removed his hands for a moment and released a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding while he got another generous dollop spread over his hands and she didn't mean for it to, but a moan slipped past her lips as he worked the lotion into her shoulders as well. His fingers stuttered for a moment.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice was closer than she thought it was and she was forced to take a deep breath and her head tilted involuntarily towards the sound of his voice, the deep timbre seeming to travel all the way through her and his breath warm on her neck.

She could only shake her head no and then his hands started moving against her skin again. Holy hell, the aloe was supposed to cool her skin but his hands were just making her hotter!

She needed a distraction before she turned around and launched herself into his arms and they did something that she didn't think either of them were ready for.

"Viniq?" She sounded out the label on the amethyst colored bottle she was holding up. To him it sounded like unique with a v but he'd not gone past ninth grade in school so what did he know.

"Hey Daryl, wanna play a game?"

His eyes flew to hers and once he saw that mischievous gleam in her eyes, he knew she was teasing a low chuckle rumbled up out of him.

"That was the worst idea you ever had girl. No offense."

She laughed as she unscrewed the lid. "It really was. I said all the wrong things. _Lord_ , you were mad."

They both started laughing then recalling and then the clarity of the situation hit them both at the same time it seemed. "It was still a good night. Talkin', bout the past, bout the future."

"It was." Daryl called back the memory of sitting on that porch with her, carving his knife into the wood and they told each other some of their deepest secrets. She was the first person he'd ever really opened up about his past to. She was the first person he'd ever cried in front of. Not just the kind where you tear up. Outside that cabin, he'd shed more tears than he had in his whole life and he'd laid his heart open that day. Open for her to peer inside and that was what surprised him the most. That she had seen. She had seen all of him and she still wanted to be around him. Sought him out even and now here they were.

"Beth's voice held a tinge of wistfulness as she took a deep swallow of the liquid. "Mmm." Some of the liquor dribbled out over her chin and she giggled, catching some of it on her finger and wiped it on what was left of her jeans. "It's good." She passed him the bottle and he wondered what it would taste like coming straight off of her lips. His heart sped up at the thought as he took it from her absently.

 _Jesus H_., he needed to stop this right now. This was dangerous territory when they hadn't even really gotten past their first kiss yet. Still it was a heady thought. He pushed it below the surface, hoping to squelch this burning need to had to pull her into his arms and drink the wine straight from her lips because he knew it just wouldn't taste as good any other way.

He took the bottle from her and took a generous swig of his own. He brought the bottle down from his lips and saw that she was watching him with his cheeks all puffed out with liquid and he had a sudden memory of one his first nights in the safe zone when Aaron had invited him to supper with him and Eric. He resisted the urge to swish the liquor around in his mouth and just swallowed it instead.

They sat there a good while, talking about things. She told him about some things that happened while she was at the hospital. Some of the people that came in, people that died. He told her about Terminus and what had happened there. Before he knew it, they'd opened the second bottle and her hand was enclosed in his own and his thumb was tracing slow circles over the back of her hand. She took another swig of the liquid. She was a little tipsy and maybe he felt buzzed too, but it was the good kind of buzz, just that warm feeling that floated over the top of your skin and your mind expanded to all sorts of things and everything felt just a little bit lighter.

Miraculously there had been only one or two walkers since they'd climbed in the vehicle, both having gotten entangled in the thorny bushes surrounding the SUV. Daryl had carefully opened the door each time and put them down. They'd left them out there as camouflage from other dead ones that might wander past.

She giggled as she pulled her lips off the bottle and a little spilled again, dribbling down her chin. She wasn't quick enough this time and he reached up with his free hand, swiping his index finger over where the droplets had come to rest and pulled his finger into his mouth, licking the liquid from it.

When he looked back up, her eyes were on his and her lips were slightly parted and this time, it was like she fucking knew his thoughts. She took another sip of the wine and let a little of it dribble over her lip and even though his heart threatened to launch itself from his chest, even though his breathing seemed to stop, he leaned forward and let his lips do what his finger had done moments ago and he dropped her hand as soon as his lips were on hers, his fingers coming up to cup her face on either side, and he wasn't sure which need was greater, his hunger or his thirst because God, she tasted good and he was right. So fucking right. The liquid turned to velvet on her lips and it tasted simply delicious coming off of her and he was certain he'd never want to drink it any other way now.

Her lips parted and he took that as an invitation. And it was. She sighed into his mouth as his tongue entered hers and he sealed their lips together, exploring, tasting, licking inside her mouth as her tongue moved against his. He couldn't imagine being anywhere but this moment as she kissed him back, all velvety smoothness, deeply, thoroughly and he was pulled under. Just lost and he didn't fucking care.

It might have been minutes or it might have been hours when he finally pulled away from her and her fingers were gripping into his shirt so tightly and she finally released him and just sort of sat back and gave him a lazy, slightly tipsy smile.

"You're a really good kisser." She giggled then and she was so damn pretty in that moment he knew it was too late for anything but giving himself over to this whole thing. He loved her. _God he fucking loved her._

"Ain't so bad yourself Greene." She smiled at him and he smiled right back because that's what you did when Beth Greene lit up the whole night sky with one of her smiles. And even just saying she smiled wasn't even. Describing anything at all about her wasn't some cookie cutter diorama. She was as unique and special as she was soft and sweet and he was completely and utterly enchanted.

She held up the bottle in her free hand to the window where just a little light filtered in, swirling around the remaining liquid. "It looks like a galaxy." She said, her voice taking on that wistful, whispering quality again.

He chuckled. "Maybe it's time to cut you off." But he wasn't even sure of what he was saying. Because the pull of her was so strong he couldn't keep his eyes off her as she put the bottle back down and his hands went right back to the sides of her head this time threaded his fingers through her hair, palms against the sides of her head, just peering into the wide expanse of her big blue doe eyes.

"No seriously, Daryl, look. It's like we're drinking the stars." She giggled again and smiled at him, eyes shiny with the haze of the liquor and something else reflected back in them. He recognized it as being the same thing he felt. Just sort of caught up in all this with the two of them. And it was good.

"Drinkin' the stars huh. Yeah, you're definitely cut off. Next thing you know you'll have me convinced we should burn this truck to the ground." He smirked at her.

She laughed. "See, it _was_ a fun night. How many people can say they burnt down a house together?"

None. He knew it and she knew it and they shared something special that night. Something that sparked this night here. Full of starry night promises and reminiscent clips of their past that seemed to forge together with their future.

As he brought his lips to hers again, she accepted his tongue readily and he kissed her thoroughly, softly, slowly until finally he pulled his lips from hers. "Lay down and get some sleep Greene." He stared are her a long minute as she seemed to consider what he was saying. As well as what he wasn't saying and that was that this wasn't going any further. Not tonight anyway.

Beth nodded and pressed her lips to his one last time, feeling that butterfly about to beat the dickens out of its wings against her rib cage and she knew it would be okay. Love was a beautiful and wonderful thing and if it was the liquor talking maybe just a little, she didn't care. She this this was real. Even if it was maybe enhanced a little by the liquor, she knew it was all firmly based in reality, in what she felt for him and what he felt for her. She was confident in that as she tucked herself in beside him.

A little while later, the only sound was their steady breathing and the crickets outside. She felt safe. Right.

" _I love you, Daryl Dixon."_ She was sloppy drunk now but she knew he got it. And it was the thing that lulled her to sleep and she knew she didn't imagine it as he leaned down to her to whisper in her ear a few moments later just before she dropped off to sleep.

" _My girl. I love you too."_


	11. What we almost lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Beth take an important step that will change what they are to one another

" _I love you Daryl Dixon."_ Those were the words on her mind before she even opened her eyes that morning and they hadn't spoken of it. Not yet. They'd gotten up and scared up a can of beans for breakfast and set out for the next town. His answering reply, " _My girl, I love you too._ " Played over and over again even more than her own words had. She knew she hadn't imagined it. She could still feel the ghost of his breath as he pressed a kiss to her forehead and could still hear the gruff timbre of his voice and how it had felt as it reached her eardrums, almost a soothing sort of burn and she knew it was real. Knew what she was feeling was real as anything she'd ever felt. Saying those words to someone wasn't like she had imagined it would be.

She had thought when she said those words to a man that it would be somehow something she had planned all day (or even longer) and worked up to saying and with Daryl it had just happened, just like breathing, tumbling out of her mouth on an exhale. Just like everything else had happened with them and maybe that's what love really was. Just two people meant to be together and letting things happen naturally, as they are supposed to. It's exactly what she felt this was and it's why she didn't say anything to Daryl about their whispered words last night. It would flesh itself out in its own time, just like it always did.

Now they stood at the back of a feed store, aptly named Farmer's Feed and Seed, that held exactly one crossbow and it was something of a gift as it was exactly the weight that Beth would need. Unfortunately they'd not been able to find any horse feed and Beth tried not to think on the foreboding jolt that sent into the pit of her belly. Daryl felt it too; she saw it in his eyes as they met hers across the counter while they searched for what they'd come for. They hadn't seen their equine friend since the day before. Beth feared the worst and though she didn't say anything to Daryl, she knew he felt the same way.

They picked through the store, rummaging for supplies and made room in their packs for the dried goods they found, several packets of beef jerky, bags of pretzels and granola mix, hippie food as Daryl called it. Beth grabbed a few other items, stuffing them into her pack and at the last minute, grabbed a couple extra pairs of laces off the shelves. The ones in her boots were starting to unravel and the ones Daryl was always tying around his ankles were starting to looking worn as well.

They put their packs back on their backs and made their way back to the front of the store, side-stepping the group of walkers they'd put down on their entrance into the place. Beth hoisted her new bow on her back and nodded to the long row of riding mowers displayed in the front window. "Too bad we can't ride those." Walking was fine as far as the day went, but it was dangerous to travel so long on foot. Already it was going to take them two days to get back to the safe zone, longer probably since they had traveled a fair distance before the bike had broken down on them.

Daryl looked in the direction Beth was pointing and noted the bright green and orange mowers lined up like they were ready for a race. "Wouldn't get us far fast enough."

"I know that." She rolled her eyes at him playfully and nudged him with her elbow as they passed through the double doors of the store back out into the parking lot. "We've got a long way back to the safe zone. I don't mind though." She was quick to add and he looked at her curiously. "I kinda like it just bein' the two of us out here. Just like old times." They'd said it before, but she needed him to know how much she had needed this. She wasn't even sure she was ready to go back, though she knew they needed to. It was stupid to stay out longer than was absolutely necessary. They still hadn't found much in the way of medical supplies but they truly had been handicapped by the loss of the motorcycle.

"Me too." His eyes met hers and she could tell he wanted to say more, but just then a walker rounded the corner of the store and he quickly dispatched it, firing a bolt into its left eye. They slowly made their way back down to the street and went back out the town the way they had come, the afternoon sun at their backs.

It was a reminder of before, when they'd set out forging a new path together. Only before they hadn't really known where they were going. Now they did and it felt right that they were forging that new path together now.

* * *

Daryl held up a hand as they came to the edge of the clearing close to where they had been that morning. He knew the Suburban they had stayed in was about 3 clicks to the left but what had him stopping now was the unmistakable sound of walkers in a feeding frenzy and another sound that sounded familiar yet not. Then he heard it. He reached out to pull her back but it was too late. They had just crept up to the edge of the bushes and in the middle of the clearing was Buttons, in the midst of a group of walkers. He was barely hanging on and his eyes slid warily to Beth. He already knew what he'd find when his eyes met hers. Sadness. Guilt. She was blaming herself; he saw the weight of it in her stare. He shook his head at her sadly and his fingers came to rest on her wrist, squeezing slightly. It wasn't enough but it would have to do for now.

He gave a nod of his head and she swiped at the barely brimming tears with the back of her hand. Just like that she got his signal to get in formation and take down the walkers that had Buttons surrounded, and maybe, hopefully, end her suffering quicker. She was kicking and her whinnying was a hoarse pitiful keening sound now. They quickly took out the ones closest to them and worked their way around. He watched as Beth quickly and efficiently plunged her knife into the top of one of their heads and finally he access to Buttons, leaning down and gripping her head. "Sorry old girl." He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, Beth turning her head as he delivered the final blow, plunging the knife into her head, ending her pain for good.

He got back up and turned to face Beth, the tears now streaming down her face. "I kind of knew it might end like this for her. But." She didn't finish. She didn't need to. He opened his arms and she walked into them, her head fitting right beneath his chin, like God himself had carved out that space just for her. His arms came to splay across her back, pulling her close as he kissed the top of her head, her blonde hair tickling his nose, but he didn't mind it. Anything to be closer to her. Anything to soothe the ache in his chest. Though he'd known it too, it had been nice to dream for just a bit that maybe they could have something like that together.

" _Never had a pet pony."_

She sniffed as she pulled back to look at him. "I'm sorry, I'm being a big baby."

"You ain't. I thought maybe the old girl could make it too. Wondered when we didn't see her this morning though."

It was pointless to try to think if there was anything else that could have been done. All you could do in this life now was the best you could. If you spent too long thinking about it, all you'd have is a life of regret of things you probably couldn't have changed even if you tried.

He thought about how he often he'd dreamed up new scenarios for what had happened in that hallway that afternoon. How he would have pulled her back at the last minute or maybe held onto her like he should have, instead of being afraid of what the others might think. He realized now more than ever that he didn't give a shit what they thought and he never should have. He was with her here now and that was all that mattered. He knew she felt the same way about it.

He thought back over their conversation before bed the night before. He knew she'd been drunk but he also knew Beth Greene didn't say anything that she hadn't been thinking about for a while and he had to wonder how long she'd been thinking about those three words. Words that he didn't think anyone would ever say to him, let alone someone as pretty, as good as her. Words he didn't imagine he'd ever say to another person, not even Merle.

But he had. And it had felt so right and though she hadn't said anything, he knew she remembered. It was all there in the way she'd caught his gaze this morning, her sweet smile turning sly just as she cut her eyes to the floor. She had heard his answering pledge and though they hadn't talked about it, it was palpable between them even now as they made their way up the drive to the lake.

They had made it all the way back the direction they'd come the day before and though they hadn't ventured up the rest of the way up the path that day, they did now, hoping for a hunting cabin or something that would do for shelter for the night. It had been a long emotional day and he could tell Beth was about as beat as he was. They followed the path all the way around the lake and up into the woods until they came into a large field and Beth gasped in delight much like she had the day before when they had come across the lake. There at the edge of the clearing was a big red barn. The structure was a sun-drenched brick red but it was clear that the paint job had barely dried when the apocalypse started as it was nearly flawless.

She reached for his hand which he took without thought, their fingers intertwined on the walk down to the barn. It was apparent there had been another structure across from it before and he had a memory of the storm that had ripped through all those weeks ago when he and the others had been trapped in a barn during a tornado. The destruction the next day had seemed like something out of a horror movie, dead corpses hanging from trees and power lines wrapped around cars and houses. By the looks of the debris in the surrounding yard, it was apparent that the house had literally blown away, much like a big bad wolf coming to call.

They quickly separated and scanned the area, clearing any walkers (only three) and setting up camp in the loft of the barn. It was relatively warm so there was no need for a fire and with all the dried jerky and what not in their packs, they wouldn't need it for preparing food. So once they'd finished a simple, but hearty supper of beef jerky, nuts and raisins, they made their way up to the loft and pulled the ladder up after them. Walkers couldn't climb ladders, but people could. No sense in ruining what was set up to be a perfectly good night of sleep for _both_ of them for a change. With the height they wouldn't have to worry about walkers and it wasn't very likely any other humans would stumble across them all the way up there, especially as remote as the property was in the first place. Still, he pulled up the ladder after them.

 _Just in case_.

They'd rolled out their packs side by side. It was warm so they wouldn't need to huddle for that purpose, but they'd both become accustomed to being next to the other and there was really no point in trying to keep up pretenses now. She sat up cross legged next to him, her hands resting on the camouflage of her new pants she had changed into for the night. She gestured to his ankles.

"Why do you have those?" Every morning he wrapped the shoelaces around his pants leg. He'd originally done it to keep out snakes. It had been around the same time he'd been looking for her, right after she'd disappeared. Gradually, over time, it became something he did out of habit and then it was just something that seemed like he should do, as a reminder that he'd never stop looking for her. Not as long as he drew breath.

He looked at her where she was cross legged beside him, watching her as he spoke. He couldn't quite keep the shaking out of his voice as he tried his best to relay to her what it meant when he tied his ankles up with those shoelaces. He didn't know if it would come out right but he needed her to understand what it meant to him. What _she_ meant to him.

"Started when you were gone. When they took you that night. The next day was with these guys, Joe and Len. Almost had a snake crawl up my pants leg in the middle of the night. I was still looking for you then, even though I didn't know where you was, I still looked. Winter came then and there weren't no more snakes but I didn't feel right if I didn't have 'em on. So I kept on doing it. Got so that was like my reminder. To never stop looking."

"Then I found you." Her voice was soft, but sure. Her eyes took him in. She knew what he was trying to say. Her eyes had gone wide with his admission. He had never told anyone why he did what he did. The reminders of her that he had which at the time was the only thing he had to keep him going. His memories of a blond haired angel that had been plucked from his side far too soon.

He nodded. "Mmmhmmmm. Now I guess I do it to remind me of what I almost lost." He paused a moment her blue eyes cutting into him. She saw what he was trying to say, even if he was saying it badly, she got it. "And of what I have." His heart beat faster with those last words. They hadn't yet defined what they were. He had a strong feeling that was about to change. That it just had.

She didn't say anything for a minute and he wondered if he was breathing but he could hear his heart thrumming in his ears as she spoke, so he must be.

"Maybe I need a reminder too, of what I almost lost." She looked at him pointedly and reached for her bag, digging through it. "Of what I have." She pulled out a pair of black laces still attached to the cardboard card, peeling it backwards and letting the cord fall from the package. She plucked them up from her lap with her thumb and forefinger and held them out to him. "Will you do it for me? Like yours."

His hands closed over hers. What was he to say? That she would want to emulate him in that way just struck something so deep in him, his hands trembled as he took them from her, nodding quickly. That it meant way more than a mimicked habit was more than he had words for, so he didn't say anything. Just murmured his agreement and consent to do what she had asked. Like he'd ever have a choice. Like he'd ever want anything but what she was asking. _Everything_.

"Mmmhmm." He carefully unwrapped the laces and watched as she turned her body and extended her legs into his lap. He gingerly took her ankle and wound the cord around it, wrapping it and letting it meet back in the center, tying it neatly. His mind went straight to the last time he'd done this for her, except her ankle had been injured then, so different and yet so much the same.

He wasn't sure what made him say it, maybe it was just the night, maybe it was the enchanting look in her eyes. Maybe it was the memory of that night that felt like a lifetime ago when he'd been trying to tell her that she'd changed his mind about everything. It hadn't just been that there was good people left. It was that she was the good left in this world. She was the one true good thing in his life and he never wanted to let that go. Maybe that's what had him opening his mouth and retelling what his mama had told him years ago. It had sounded like a fairy tale at the time because he couldn't imagine a time when his pops had ever had a romantic bone in his body. He had never thought he did either, but he supposed everybody had to start somewhere.

Beth watched Daryl as he spoke, the way his eyes nervously flashed to hers and her heart nearly broke for this sweet and gentle man. How he said everything with his eyes. Sometimes it absolutely blew her mind that it wasn't all right there on her face how much she loved him and that he didn't guess it immediately.

"My Ma said back in the ancient days, they used to bind their hands together. To pledge their vows. Said her and my pops did it in their wedding ceremony. I know this ain't the same thing, because it's not our hands, but." His eyes flew to hers as she interrupted him, put her hands on his where they'd stilled their movements on her other leg.

"Daryl it _is_ the same thing. If you want it to be that is." She let the full weight of her words settle before she took her hands in his, laced their fingers together. "I don't want anyone else ever. I just want you." She scooted closer to him, her legs draped over his lap. It was still so new, so wonderful but it didn't feel weird at all as she wound her arms up around his neck and he turned towards her, his fingers resting on her waist, his thumbs grazing her skin lightly just above the waistband of her pants, their faces inches apart as she looked deep into his eyes.

"I meant what I said last night Daryl Dixon. It wasn't just some drunken moment. I love you. So it _is_ the same thing. And I'll always come find you just like I know you'll always come find me." Her voice was a lot surer than she thought it would be in a situation like this. She was essentially pledging her wedding vows to the man she loved after all.

She didn't think he'd say anything. But he did. Oh he did.

" _Beth_."

It was one word. It was a thousand.

"I love you too. And we can do this right when we get back if ya want. Have the Father do it up proper."

She was already shaking her head, her face lit up in that Beth Greene smile that he loved so much. That he'd missed so damn much when she'd been away from him. "We _did_ do it right. It's perfect." She smiled softly, the blue in her eyes softening, and he smiled back. Actually smiled.

He nodded. There wasn't anything left to say after that. She was right, it _was_ perfect. One hand came up, his fingers brushing the hair from her eyes, tucking one strand behind her ear, never taking his eyes off of her, until he cupped the back of her head, closed his eyes, bringing his lips to hers in the most sweet, tender and perfect kiss, his lips moving over hers gently, tongue probing softly and entering her mouth, teasing, licking, tasting, sealing for eternity the words they'd just spoken.

He pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. They didn't really say anything. They didn't really have to. Limbs intertwined, fingers laced, foreheads pressed, and heartbeats in sync they stayed that way awhile, bound together.

It was a perfect moment in a very imperfect world. You really couldn't ask for anything more than that. It was a good day. Two lives, become one.

Yeah, pretty much perfect.


	12. Wolves Not Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are wolves at the door, in more ways than one.

Sometime in the night, Beth woke to the sound of howling in the distance and it had gotten quite chilly. Daryl was actually sleeping, she could hear a light snore coming from beside her where he slept on his back. She shifted closer to him, figuring he wouldn't mind the closeness after what they'd shared last night after all.

She knew what they had done was called a binding ceremony, and she thought she understood why it was named thus. She felt bound to him in a way now that she couldn't describe and she knew she'd never be beholden to another as long as she drew breath.

It was so strange sometimes when she thought about it, her and Daryl, and then at other times, like now, it was as if they had always been thus. She had never imagined Daryl as a "toucher" before but he was. Oh he was.

She shivered a bit and Daryl's breathing changed and she stilled for a moment. As he drifted back to sleep, she thought about the times before when they had made camp for the night. It had rarely been a time they could both sleep at the same time like this. Most nights they took shifts, sometimes barely speaking to one another, especially in those first few weeks. Then gradually, after they'd been together awhile, and especially after their horrible fight at the cabin, he'd been gentle with her. Kind. Patient.

She had noticed something else too. After that, it was almost as if he sought her out. A gentle press of his hand to her shoulder to guide them in a new direction or a gingerly touch of care on her ankle when it was injured. Even now, in his sleep, his legs were pressed to hers and she had to wonder at a man who had once seemed so off limits in the day, he was so very the opposite now, especially in the night.

She thought of their shared kisses last night and on the nights previous and she just couldn't imagine any other Daryl than the one who had sealed his mouth over hers and whispered the words of "I love you" and solemn vows of always finding the other, like they were two halves of the same whole piece and truly they were.

The entire time she had been away from them all, it was him that she thought on often. When her thoughts had been plagued with her family, it was Daryl's face that kept pressing itself to the forefront of her mind and in that instant as she thought it, she thought maybe she got why Maggie didn't come looking for her instead of Glenn and why she'd never come across any signs that said "Beth, go to Terminus".

The man beside her had seen to it that she was fit to track them all. She didn't need hand written signs, when all the signs in her heart had told her where to go and now here she was, next to the man who haunted her dreams all those months ago.

The wolf howled in the distance and though she was warm enough snuggled up beside Daryl she couldn't seem to suppress the shiver that ran down her spine. Trying to ignore it, she sidled closer still and settled down to get another couple hours of sleep and hopefully the morrow, the sun would be shining on their faces and could ward off this persistent chill she could feel seeping into her bones.

* * *

Two thoughts fought for dominance in Beth's mind the moment she shifted back into consciousness. It had not gotten any warmer in the night because she was freezing and she barely had time to process that thought before she felt a hand clamp over her mouth.

Adrenaline surged through her at almost the same moment that Daryl's eyes came into focus above her. Of course. It was his hand, familiar, warm, and most of all, urgent. His eyes though as she met them were focused, steel hard glints of ferocity. He was in his protective mode and what she called his high alert stance. She nodded as he removed his hand and she pricked her ears up to what he'd evidently detected while they slept. It was not yet full light and Beth could glimpse the first hints of a grey misty morning through the loft door they'd left open.

Fear prickled her heart and threatened to choke out what was left of her oxygen as she heard voices below them.

"Nobody been here in a long while." The voice was male, deep and it was joined by another one a few seconds later.

"That's where you're wrong, city boy." The voice was jeering and not a little bit annoying. "These tracks here are fresh, sometime in the last day or two. I've heard there are scouts in this area for that community we been tryin' to find. They got themselves set up pretty and we need to go make sure they are ready to share the wealth. Bunch of rich bitches." The last part was muttered while him and "city boy" made a lot of noise below them. She didn't dare breathe or move and evidently Daryl didn't either as they laid huddled together, him still half slotted over her body.

One of the strongest senses she'd come to rely on since the world had turned was her sense of hearing and she recalled when they laid down the night before, the boards creaking as they'd settled. The last thing they needed right now, was to alert their visitors of their presence. She knew Daryl would rather avoid any run-ins with other groups or persons altogether. They had more than their fair share of reasons between them to never trust a living soul besides the other.

"Should we burn it down like the others?" It was the second voice, the one who was apparently in charge.

"Nah, the alpha said we shouldn't burn anything else down. It brought the others to us faster that last time, remember?" City boy was really Beth's favorite person right now. Thoughts of her own barn burning down back when they left the farm were still very fresh in her mind as if she could smell the acridity of the smoke behind her. Sometimes she felt like fire followed on their heels no matter where they went. Just part of burning down the past and forging fire to the future, but not like this.

She looked up into her companion's eyes and he communicated his assurance, that things would be okay. No matter what. She believed him with her whole heart but it didn't keep it from beating all the faster with thoughts of having to escape this place where last night had been such a good memory. She didn't want to think of the omen it would portend if they were to burn down this happy place they had found. It would be nothing like burning down the shine shack all those months ago. It just wouldn't seem right.

"I don't give a fuck what Derek has to say, shit for brains." The voice said, his voice dripping with disdain for their apparent leader. At least that's what alpha meant in Beth's native tongue.

"Sorry, Chip. I just meant that I don't want to have to deal with any more of the dead ones than we have to." Shit for brains/city boy was again the voice of reason and if he weren't such a threat Beth would consider him for a purple heart or whatever medal of valor would be bestowed upon someone being flanked by such poor leadership.

"Fine. You win. Let's go. Ain't nothin' here we need." The voice faded and city boy apparently cut his losses and didn't say anything, following after him.

* * *

Daryl had woken to the sound of leaves crunching below them and dread seeped into his bones as he realized that the noises being made were indeed human. Live human. When he heard the first muffled voice he was sure and he didn't think, just acted, moved over Beth and made sure she was silent. She was still prone to wake up from a nightmare and the last thing they needed was her sometimes blood-curdling scream alerting the intruders to their presence. Better that they keep quiet so this didn't have to go down the only other way it could if they were detected: Their intruders lying in a heap and him delivering their final blow. He just wasn't willing to take any chances anymore (especially with her). Not when he knew the stakes and how high they could really be. He didn't know if there was a deity to thank but he was grateful for her being with him now and just in case someone up there _was_ still calling the shots, he sent up a prayer now that he could get her safely out of this.

On the one hand, he cursed himself for bringing her with him but he knew it was inevitable. She'd needed out of there and away from the walls (and everyone inside them) as badly as he did. And all things considered, they had been relatively lucky so far. Still, these people milling about below him sounded anything but good people. They didn't sound any better than the assholes at Terminus that tried to make a meal of them or the Governor. Hell, you could take your pick from any of the men of this world they'd come across who had turned to evil to get ahead and stay alive.

Now, he almost regretted scaring her like he did. He hated seeing that flash of fear in her eyes, even for a minute but he also knew it was necessary. Sometimes you had to be afraid in this world. That was another thing she had taught him. That it was okay to admit you were afraid. And he was sure as hell afraid right now. But he tried not to let it show. For her sake. He knew she could read him like a book. Always could. He fought against everything in him to just lean down and capture her lips with his and kiss a smile back on her face but right now it was fight or flight. Run or die. It was always what it came down to nowadays. But if he was running, he knew there was no one else in this world he wanted by his side more than this girl. _His girl._

He nodded at her after they had finally gone, having slipped away, the "brains" of the group having cowed to the apparent voice of reason. For whatever reason, the kid reminded him of Randall, though he hadn't seen his face, and his voice sounded nothing like him. It was just an overall feeling he had. He finally chalked it up to this place. This barn that, of course, would remind them so much of that time spent together on the farm, back in the first days after the turn. How naïve they'd all been then.

Even he had been naïve. For he hadn't seen half of the things coming for him then. For them. And now as he looked down at her and the relative danger was past for the moment, he did what he had been wanting to do a few minutes earlier, he leaned down and slotted his mouth over hers and kissed her. In reverence. In gratitude that she was still breathing and they were still together and not trying to escape with their lives in the midst of a fiery blaze.

He pulled away and feeling relatively certain that their intruders were well out of earshot he chanced moving and heard the telltale creak of the boards. Beth looked up at him, biting her lower lip, a blush spreading across her features.

"There for a minute, it kind of felt like the trunk. Remember that night?" Her voice was barely above a whisper as they both sat up, not giving voice just yet to the danger lurking outside. Did he remember that night?

He did indeed. It was a night he wasn't likely to forget. He had wanted to be anything but near another soul and instead he was locked in the trunk of a big-ass car at the end of the goddamn world with Beth, the end of their world all over again when they lost the prison. It's what it always came down to. What they lost.

He nodded at her. "I do. Thought we were gonna roast like a couple ducks it was so hot."

"And it's cold now." Her hands came up and rubbed over her arms as she reached for her pack. He knew she had a couple of sweaters stashed in there. "Except you kept me warm last night and well, now." She blushed again and did that little thing where she tilted her head and he stared at her blinking, finally getting what she was talking about with the trunk. He'd considered her close proximity then but things being what they were between them then, it wasn't even remotely similar to now. He smirked.

"Yeah you keep me warm too." He reached over and ran his hand over her leg. He didn't know if it was too forward or not but he figured they were practically hitched now. Or were hitched really as that's what that had been about last night.

Huh. Him. Hitched. He'd never thought he'd see the day but he'd pledged a vow to her last night and he meant it.

" _You'll always come find me just like I'll always come find you."_

It was an oath his heart had spoken well before he'd bound her ankles in the string he now ran his fingers over lightly, a symbol of that pledge. His heart had instead beat in time to that unspoken vow of yesterday, when he'd chased after that car, every footstep an echo of the heartbeat he should have had. He'd always come find her and he knew that to be true just as he knew every mile his feet had carried him from the time she was taken from him to the time she was blessedly returned like some fallen angel. His angel. Here he was at the end of the damn world, waxing poetic about this beautiful girl and danger was literally at their door but somehow he felt it was all going to be okay. He guessed you couldn't help but be hopeful after what the past few months had shown him (what she'd shown him).

Beth thought again of the chill she had settle over her in the night and she wondered now if her senses had been trying to tell her something even then. "It sounded like they were talking about Alexandria."

Daryl nodded at her thoughtfully as he reached over and put his leather vest back on over his flannel. "We're gonna have to find a car. We'll circle back to that town where we got your bow and maybe we'll get lucky. Have a little faith."

He winked at her _. Heavens, thought Beth._

Honest to god, sometimes she didn't know how she kept her breath around him and she couldn't help but grin. She reflected a moment on how hopeful he sounded and it thrilled her a bit knowing that maybe something of what she'd tried so hard to tell him before had resonated.

"Thought faith didn't do shit for us?" She couldn't keep the sly grin off her face, teasing him, as they gathered the blanket up and folded it between them.

She met him in the middle as he had picked up the other corner of their pallet. "Yeah well some girl told me it wouldn't kill me to have a little faith."

"And here you are. Last man standing and all that." She breathed and with the blanket pressed between them she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his in a soft kiss before setting her feet back on the ground. She'd almost turned to get her pack from the floor, making to put the blanket back in the her sack when he stopped her with his fingers pressed to her elbow, pulling her back in his embrace.

"Hey." He surprised her, impulsively leaning down and swiping his lips over hers again, a little more urgently, almost, sort of, possessively. She felt her heart flip over and a heat settle in her belly and before she knew it, he'd pulled away, his breathing as labored as hers. Eventually this heat between them was going to demand to have an answer. They were after all, for all intents and purposes, married. "Just wanted to do that. I have a feeling I won't get the chance again any time soon."

She nodded at him and smiled softly. "Well, it's always good to have the practice." She realized how it sounded and then cleared her throat. Then he did too.

Her heart all aflutter as she descended the ladder ahead of him, she thought on what it might be like to lie beneath her companion and she decided that dangerous or not, the distraction from their current predicament might do her some good.

Two hours later they were safely ensconced inside an older model sedan, not too unlike the one they'd hidden inside the trunk of all those months ago. Out of habit, Beth tuned the dial on the radio and then laughed, sitting back in her seat and looking at Daryl. "It's so weird to think there might not ever be radios and such again, you know?"

He thought back to when they'd sat across from one another on the porch of that shine shack and how they'd bared all and she'd wanted birthdays and summer picnics and he was sad for a minute. He wanted her to have it all. All that and more.

"Well you could always sing." He turned his head for a second and couldn't help the corner of his mouth quirking up. He knew she'd get the reference.

She grinned at him from the passenger seat as he leaned back and adjusted the mirror. "Thought you'd never ask."

As Beth began to sing, the car speeding them back in the direction of the Safe Zone, he thought back to how things used to be and to how far they had come now. Just a redneck nobody and the girl fighting by his side. Just as he was that night as he'd watched her from the shadows of a dark funeral parlor, he was taken in by her beauty. The beauty of her voice, of her countenance as she sang and how very lucky he found himself to be in her presence. He might be the last man standing, but with her beside him he thought maybe he could stand a little bit longer, a little bit straighter and maybe be the man she needed him to be. And in the same way she had made him believe in the impossible, he thought maybe he could believe this too and that was everything.

 

I'm only human, I need a god  
To show me what we won when we fought  
From morning to dusk  
Our tears causing rust on all of our weapons  
And he's just a man but deep in his eyes  
I see all this love without the lies  
From now till forever  
We'd be so much better without the weapons

Empty my gun, dull my knife  
Build a house, make a life  
We lie in bed and let the record play  
I hope that he and I will always be this way

Oh, I'm only human but I've found a match  
He doesn't hurt, he doesn't scratch  
I'm just some girl but I've found a soul  
He doesn't push, he doesn't pull  
He's just a man but he's like a savior  
That I don't deserve after my bad behavior  
He says he's wasted with no money left  
But all that I see is perfect

Empty my gun, dull my knife  
Build a house, make a life  
We lie in bed and let the record play  
I hope that he and I will always be this way

I am done with the jealousy  
Done with the fighting  
Done with words that feel just like biting  
I have found a new man with a heart he wants to share  
It just goes to show life isn't always unfair  
I have pumped new blood into this heart for him to take  
We're gonna move to California to a house on a lake  
And some day we will kiss in front of family and friends  
Only cake and champagne and no need  
For weapons

Empty my gun, dull my knife  
Build a house, make a life  
We lie in bed and let the record play  
I hope that he and I will always be this way

All these clear-headed thoughts were once home to doubt  
Think I finally know what life is about  
And it seems smooth sailing where the waters were rough  
How the world looks different when you find yourself  
In love, in love  
In love, in love  
In love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know how you are liking the story so far in the coments, xoxoxo


	13. "Welcome to the family"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Beth find a friend

"Movies." She glanced at Daryl as he spoke. They'd been playing a game for the last mile and a half of their walk. The car had run out of gas three hours ago and they'd had to start walking with all their gear in tow. They'd taken the woods, which made traversing the terrain a bit harder but they both felt safer being ensconced within the trees of the forest than on the open road anyway. Less chance of running into trouble. Trouble that was likely headed straight for the safe zone by the sounds of those two guys talking this morning. Beth hoped they got back before too long. The car had taken them further than they'd thought it would, having giving up the last ghost of fuel when they were still a good 20 miles outside of the safe zone.

"I didn't peg you for a movie guy." She teased and then remembered the last time she had misjudged him. But this was not even remotely the same she thought as he shot her a playful look. He was remembering the same thing she was, she knew.

The game they were playing was simple. One of them named something they missed about the old world and the other figured out a way to make it happen in their world now. If that wasn't possible, then they were to come up with an alternative. For instance, Beth had said she missed going to the library.

She thought her heart flipped over twelve times with his response. "I can just build you one. We'll fill it with books we get on runs."

Maybe other girls liked diamonds and furs and fancy cars and mansions but Beth knew the way to her heart was through this sweet man's offer of a custom library for two. That was love, she thought.

She had reached over and grabbed his hand on impulse lacing their fingers together. She saw the crinkle in his eyes and the upturn of the corners of his mouth. It was that proud little smile he got when he knew he'd said something that made her happy. It was happening more and more. Either he really knew her better than either of them thought or she was just a big sap and couldn't stop grinning for five seconds every time he spoke.

"Well, I am. Merle was too. Drug me too all the action flicks in town. We'd always sneak in at the drive in. You probably don't even know what that is." He said, his eyes drawn down slightly as the subject of their age difference came up. It didn't bother her in the slightest so she didn't see why it should bother anyone else. Still, his eyes held a teasing glint as he asked her.

"I'll have you know that Senoia had a drive-in until five years ago. It burned down in the freak wildfires." He squeezed her hand. It seemed like things in their past always burned.

"I remember those." He recalled the wildfires that ripped through the Georgia countryside in the midst of the worst drought the south had seen in twenty years. "You sure that wasn't seven years ago?" His own dad's place had nearly burned to the ground, but like the bogeyman himself, though the world burned around him, he failed to catch fire. He guessed maybe demons were the only thing that didn't burn in this world or any other.

Beth counted on her free hand. "Oops, yeah, that was when it was. I don't miss Math." Beth giggled, turning to look at him her eyes bright as they came into a clearing at the edge of a thicket of trees. A noise in the underbrush caught both their attention and their hands dropped and they brought their weapons up immediately. Beth chose her knife, because she was still as yet not used to her new bow. Daryl likewise had his bow trained on the darkened shadows of the thick bushes that were rustling but only slightly. It sounded too small to be a walker. Maybe a rabbit or a fox. Of all the things Beth thought it would be, the last thing she expected was the black snout of a dog, a puppy really as it couldn't be more than six months old, a grey and black furry mixed breed with gorgeous blue eyes reflecting back almost feral. She breathed. "It's a dog."

She couldn't help the wistful look that came over her face as Daryl's blue eyes met hers. "Stay back."

"No wait." Beth put her hand up. "Let me." She knelt down while Daryl stood guard and she took a tentative move towards the frightened pup, its shoulders hunched over. The world hadn't been kind to this poor creature, she could tell and she was honestly surprised it had survived this far on its own and seemed fairly intact.

"It almost looks like half wolf." Daryl said quietly as Beth held out her hand to the animal. He'd stuck his snout in the air, which meant he was at least curious.

"That's what I was thinking." Beth said in a neutral tone so that the animal would hopefully trust her. She held her hand out still and flattened her palm.

"Here." Daryl said from behind her, placing a piece of beef jerky in her hand. Beth immediately threw it at the pup, the poor thing catching it in mid air and wolfing it down immediately. As soon as it was down his gullet, he came straight to her sniffing for more, whining pitifully as he licked at her outstretched hand.

"I think you made a friend." Beth's heart clenched a bit remembering the horse they'd almost gotten to keep. She looked up at Daryl as she pulled the dog into her lap. Daryl glanced about, scanning their area for immediate threats.

"We can't stay here." He said quietly.

She knew that. Of course she knew that, but she didn't want to just leave this poor thing defenseless and on its own. She thought of how she'd felt when she'd been on the road for all that time on her way back to Daryl. To all of them. "I want to keep him."

Beth fed him another piece of jerky that Daryl handed her and he harrumphed. "We aint' takin' that thing back to the safe zone with us."

She stood up as the dog finished his treats and sat back and regarded the both of them with what Beth thought was wise eyes. She turned to face Daryl and narrowed her eyes on him, preparing to argue her case.

* * *

He stood there looking at the woman he'd pledged his life to the night before, his wife, he guessed and they were having it seemed their first domestic disagreement and it was over a damn dog. It figured. Memories of their time together before seemed to hit him all at once as she held that pup in her arms.

" _I told you to stay back."_ He'd said back then.

But maybe if she'd have gone to the door (he never would have allowed it back then) they would still be here. Beth wouldn't have been careless, he thought. Maybe it would be okay.

" _Maybe we can stay here awhile."_ He thought on that long ago night when he'd told her he wanted to settle down. In the old world that meant a house, a job, and he guessed maybe that could include a dog.

She looked him square in the eye and he knew he was done for already. "Mrs. Neudermeyer has a dog." Her chin went in the air at that statement and her ponytail flipped, her baby blues flashing at him and that was pretty much that.

"Fine. But you're trainin' him. It is a him right?" The last thing he needed was to be outnumbered. "And he's gotta be ready to go on runs."

Beth jumped up and threw her arms around his neck and he barely had time to get his bow out of the way as it clattered to the ground. He smiled into her hair as his arms came up around her waist, gripping her through her sweater and shirt, so soft in all the right places. He felt a vaguely familiar stirring as she pulled back to look at him. "Thank you Daryl."

"You don't gotta thank me." He protested.

"I know, but I want to." Beth said and winked at him and that familiar stirring awakened a bit more of him than he bargained for as he felt himself go hard at her suggestive wink and tiny giggle hiding a deceptively wicked smile behind her eyes before finally pressing her lips to his and sighing softly.

His lips opened under hers and he swept his tongue into her mouth, kissing her thoroughly and finally ending it and opening his eyes to pull back to look at her. "Can I name him?" She asked, her eyes wide as the sky and just as blue.

He nodded and smiled back at her. ""Course."

"Good I think I want to name him Samson, we can call him Sam for short. Did you see his paws? He's going to be huge!" She exclaimed.

They continued on their trek then. The dog followed along, seeming to understand that he was coming with them now. "Come on boy." Beth said brightly. The dog was smart, he sidestepped branches and twigs like a pro. Daryl was almost certain he had at least half wolfs-blood running through his veins. Beth turned to him, her eyes bright with hope as they topped the next hill. They could see the side-lying streets of Alexandria. Another mile and they'd be safe behind the walls of the community again.

They'd almost made it back. "We made it." She said from beside him. He couldn't quite shake the memory of her saying that another time when they'd been on her infernal quest for alcohol. She looked so different, and yet exactly the same as she repeated those three words now as he joined her at the top of the hill, toting the large supply bag they'd found at their last stop.

It had been an old mom and pop pharmacy, the kind you might have found in his hometown and it hadn't even been touched. It looked like the owners had closed down the shop for a week's vacation when the world went to hell. He wondered if they were still on that vacation; maybe wherever they had gone had been remote enough that they could have survived. Then he wondered when in the hell he started caring about the people that might have inhabited their scouting places before. He knew the reason was standing right beside him. She'd made him think differently on a lot of things.

They heard the distant hum of a car approaching and soundlessly they both retreated to the tree line at the edge of the road, the dog following with them and Beth hunched down behind the nearest oak tree, pulling on Samson's scruff, situating him right between her legs where she was crouched down and the dog seemed to be on high alert as well, his ears pricked up at the treetops.

"It's Aaron with the RV." Daryl said suddenly, striding back out to the road as soon as he realized who it was.

The vehicle slowed on approach and they could make out Aaron behind the wheel and Morgan beside him. Samson let out a small warning bark and a low growl as Aaron opened the door for them to get in. "It's okay boy." Beth looked to Daryl as if to apologize.

"It's okay. He's already protective of you. I like it." He said easily.

"I don't like dogs." Morgan said warily from the window he'd just rolled down.

"Hi Morgan." Beth said happily, clearly ignoring his complaint, and he didn't think he'd seen Beth smiling like this since before, well since before she was taken and he thought she was gone from him forever. In fact, she seemed more like the old Beth than ever and he thought it was smart that they'd gone on their own for a bit. It was what they had both needed.

"He's just a puppy and you'll love Samson." She said brightly as she coaxed the dog to follow her inside.

Aaron's eyes met his questioningly and he shrugged. The man looked at him as though he knew exactly what was going on here. Daryl sort of wished he could clue him in because he felt like he was muddling along minute by minute with Beth. But as long as she was smiling he must be doing something right so he just kept on going with his gut. Maybe it would keep him in the clear.

"Samson huh?" Aaron was clearly amused by this turn of events and he knew he would get shit for this later. He knew what was up with Beth or at least it seemed like he'd figured it out.

"She asked if she could keep it." Daryl shrugged and followed Beth into the back of the camper, situating himself behind Morgan and Beth rode behind Aaron who got back behind the driver's seat. He glanced into the back where Samson had curled up at Beth's feet.

"He stinks." Aaron said mildly and Daryl shot him a look. "What? He does."

"He has a point, Daryl." She directed her attention at Aaron then. "I'll make sure I give him a bath when we get back and I promise I'll housetrain him. He can sleep in our room."

And just like that, Beth announced that they were sleeping in the same bed. Permanently. He thought he'd be embarrassed. He thought he'd be angry or defensive but when it came right down to it, he found out he was almost proud that he was with her. That she wanted to be with him. That out of all the people in this shit world, or what was left of it anyway, she had picked him. The two men in the front didn't say anything one way or the other and he thought maybe they either were surprised or didn't care. He thought maybe the latter though. Maybe everyone had already figured it out he guessed.

"Wait until Maggie sees him. She loves dogs." Speaking of which, he wondered what her sister was going to say.

As if reading his mind, Beth spoke quietly from beside him. "I'll talk to Maggie." He reached his hand over and squeezed her thigh gently.

"I can talk to her too." He said. He would. He'd let her sister know that he planned on making Beth the happiest woman ever to live on the planet or die trying. He knew it was the right thing to do even if he hadn't been raised that way. He would have asked her old man if he was still here, right after he was done running from him until he got used to the idea of an old redneck like him putting his hands on his little girl. It wasn't like that with him and Beth. At least it never started out to be. Though he was figuring things were headed that way. Soon too, if he was guessing right. He just felt like things were creeping towards that edge with Beth and that stirring happened again, deep in his core.

A few minutes later, they pulled through the gates and parked the RV on the curb, all of them exiting and gathering their gear. "Let's run these meds up to Pete and then we'll go find Maggie." Beth said from beside him on the sidewalk.

Aaron and Morgan had been out scouting. They'd made arrangements in the passing conversation on the ride in that they would go and retrieve Daryl's bike the next morning and bring it back here for repair. It was the smartest thing to do under the circumstances. He couldn't very well disassemble a bike out in the wild like things were now. They'd also warned Aaron of the guys they'd run into at the barn and though he didn't say anything, his eyebrows quirked up at some parts of their tale. Daryl wondered what Aaron thought and knew once again, he'd catch hell for it later sometime.

They dropped all the medical supplies they'd found, off at the infirmary. Pete was nowhere to be found, probably off drowning in a vat of whiskey. Good riddance, he thought. As such, they left their spoils in the foyer with the note. Beth had already taken out what she would need for a portable medic bag and set them all aside in the RV for their next scouting mission.

His bones were getting weary and he was looking very forward to the hot shower ahead. He followed Beth up the path to the house where Maggie and Glenn lived. They were supposed to be at home according to Eugene who was manning the gate.

They finally got to the door and Maggie answered, slightly breathless and clearly surprised to see them. "Beth!" A smile broke out over her face and then just as suddenly slipped away when she saw the dog. "What on earth?"

"This is Samson. He's our dog, isn't he great?" Beth said brightly.

Maggie just met her eyes with confusion. "I guess that's okay. Glenn probably won't mind it much." She smiled at her sister. Daryl winced at the last part as everyone got quiet.

"Glenn won't mind what." Glenn appeared behind Maggie in the doorway and they all stood there looking at each other.

"Alright if we all go inside? Daryl and I have something to talk to you about."

Maggie glanced from them to the dog and to their joined hands, her expression going from one of surprise and then understanding. It was almost comical watching the light bulb click on over the eldest Greene's head as her eyes met Daryl's. Finally she understood all his silence, his tears on the road here, his anger ever since, and probably she could see everything that was written there now.

"Let's have some coffee. We have catching up to do. For real this time." Maggie smiled at them both softly.

Daryl knew then that it was going to be okay. His eyes met Glenn's who clapped him on the back as the job was left to him to coax the dog into the house after he had marked his territory on Maggie and Glenn's bushes out front.

"Welcome to the family, brother." Was all he said. Daryl couldn't help the small smile as he answered.

"Thanks." Family. Yeah, he guessed that's what he had now. In all of them, but especially in Beth.


	14. "Goodnight Mr. Dixon"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's bath time for Samson....and Daryl and Beth too ;)

Dusk was settling over the zone as they made their way to the house, Samson following closely on Beth's heels. It was almost comical how quickly she had gained his trust.

"Should have named him Shadow instead of Samson." Daryl remarked as they walked up the porch steps to Aaron and Eric's house. Daryl opened the door while Beth waited for the pup to relieve himself on the front lawn one last time before they went inside.

Their time at Maggie and Glenn's had passed swiftly with Maggie chatting excitedly over having gotten an ultrasound from a neighboring community called The Hilltop while she and Daryl had been away.

Beth had held the tiny photograph of her future niece or nephew between her fingers and her eyes had blurred with tears. Their father would have loved being here for this; she missed him so and she knew Maggie did too, just as much. The look that had passed between the sisters said that they would chat later; alone.

Though they'd been there and watched as their father fell to the ground in that prison yard, dead at the hands of a madman, they'd had little time to process their grief. In some ways, she felt like they hadn't processed any of their losses that just seemed to keep adding up.

So they'd forced all unpleasant thoughts aside. Now was the time for happiness and a celebration of their family growing, both by the baby on the way and by adding Daryl officially into their tiny fold, though Beth thought he had been a part of their family since the day he walked onto the farm in some regards.

"Come on Samson. It's time for you to get your first bath." The dog followed her happily up the steps as if he understood words like "clean" and "soap."

Daryl worked on cleaning up his bow while Beth made the dog at least house-presentable, if not house-trained quite yet. He had piddled on the floor of the bathroom just after his bath and Beth had scolded him lightly. The look in his eyes was so forlorn, she almost hated to berate him for it, but it was the only way he would learn.

She ushered him outside as soon as he had made the mistake and by the time she came back inside she looked like she was the one who'd been given a bath instead of the other way around. She was soaked from head to toe from wrestling with a very soapy Samson to rinse him off. For some reason, he'd been slightly freaked out by the water as it ran from the faucet, so he'd fought her at first.

Then once he'd realized it was only water and not meant to harm him, she could barely drag him back out from under the stream since he kept drinking it. She guessed the excess water was what prompted the accident. She sighed as she watched Samson pad off to lie down by the hearth in the living area while she went to find Daryl to tell him she was going to take a shower.

He wasn't in the kitchen or backyard and a quick search of the garage turned up empty too.

A quick peek in the living room showed Samson already fast asleep, likely tired out by the bath. As she made her way up the stairs, she found herself wondering if the animal had ever known a family before; if he'd ever had safety. She felt a wave of gratitude wash over her for having found this place; for having found them all, but most of all for having found Daryl. He was her safe place more than anywhere else in this world.

She walked to his bedroom and paused in the doorway for a minute, overcome by a sudden case of nerves. This was silly. She and Daryl had kissed dozens of times in the last couple of days. They'd shared the same bed already, though they hadn't done anything. Why was this any different?

But it _was_ different and it was palpable and she wondered for a moment if that's why Daryl had disappeared. She turned to leave the room and retreat to her own. For what, she didn't know.

Daryl's voice stopped her from the bathroom doorway inside his room. "Who got a bath, you or the dog?" His eyes held a glint of amusement and she giggled as she crossed the room and leaned on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips.

Though her feet were set back on the floor, she still felt a little off balance in the wake of kissing him. Maybe he sensed this because his hands had come up to grip her hips through her jeans. Her breath caught in her throat at the gesture as she fell flush against him, and he didn't make a move to remove his hands from her. She wondered if she would always feel this way around him. She kind of hoped she did.

She turned her face up to his and hoped he couldn't tell how bad she smelled from bathing Sam. She doubted anything bothered either of them anymore. There wasn't a whole lot worse smells than walker guts.

"I was just coming to find you to tell you I am taking a shower. Unless you're already getting ready to." Her face fired up redder than it ever had as she glanced at the shower not three feet from the both of them and fought to squelch down those butterflies that had suddenly taken roost in her tummy lest it take flight with them and float up out of her throat.

"You can go first." His voice was gruff as he regarded her carefully, his eyes scanning her face but he still hadn't moved. He tilted his head to the side and his eyes lit up with fresh amusement as one hand left her hip and he plucked something from the side of her head, but left his palm resting against the side of her head, his thumb stroking her face softly.

"Dog hair." He said, but Beth didn't really care what reason he had for running his fingers through her hair. She had lost her breath in the wake of his stare which had suddenly gone quite dark, his hands tangled thickly in her hair.

"Were you really getting ready to take a shower; I can totally wait. Or?" She didn't even know where she found the breath to speak, but her eyes met his. She let her voice trail off purposefully, a tinder of desire gathering in her belly at the turn her thoughts had taken.

The truth of the matter was, there was no reason in the world why they couldn't shower together. They were always trying to conserve water in the zone anyways. Now that the idea had gained momentum, she reasoned, "I could use some help with my hair." Her eyes met his and the unspoken challenge rested between them.

For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer her or that he would make some excuse and walk away. But instead he looked at her and nodded, and shut the bathroom door behind them.

* * *

Daryl turned back from the door, taking his hand from the knob and not knowing a single thing about how to proceed from this moment forward. He was nervous but not like he thought he would be. This seemed like the right time. Aaron and Eric were on duty at the gates so the house was empty and free of anyone who might hear them and his mind flitted to all those times at the prison they'd had to endure Maggie and Glenn's escapades. Everyone had gotten so tired of it they had finally taken to fucking in the tower.

He felt like the luckiest man in the entire world as he faced Beth who was already moving her fingers to her jeans, unbuttoning. Much of this was rote by now because of course they'd undressed somewhat in front of each other before, at the very least to change clothes hurriedly when on the run after the prison.

Had it only been days ago that Beth had undressed behind a curtain to don a paper gown while he'd stood as a guard and now here he was in front of her and his fingers went to the buttons on his shirt and they were shaking slightly.

Beth's fingers came up to still over his own. "Let me." So he did.

He let her undo every button, her tiny but nimble fingers slipping each button through its corresponding hole until his shirt was open and his chest bare to her roving gaze. His eyes watched hers as she focused on the task at hand and when she looked back up at him, he barely recognized the heat in her heavy-lidded gaze. This was a different Beth than he was used to, but he found he liked it.

Something awakened inside him at seeing her hands part the fabric of his shirt and slip it from his shoulders and the shaking in his fingers abated and he tentatively brought his hands up to her shirt, the fabric still damp from Samson's bath. Not for the first time, he noted her hardened nipples through the near sheer material and swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat. Slowly and carefully he returned the favor and undid all the buttons, nearly holding his breath the entire time.

He swore she could probably hear every thud of his heart as it beat beneath her exploring fingers. He also swore that Smurfs must make the buttons for women's shirts because they were impossibly small and hard to work with but finally he had worked the last button free and blessedly she was not wearing a bra.

He'd seen her tits. Plenty of times. But not like this and certainly not with the implied permission that he had just been given to touch them. And oh, he did want to touch them. Her shirt slid to the floor, forgotten along with his, as her fingers skated down the expanse of his chest, down over his belly, combing through the sparse hairs, lower and lower. Her touch was feather light yet sure and steady.

It was odd the moment she got to button on his pants was the instant he became aware of his erection, straining against his zipper. It jolted him for a moment, the reality of their situation. That he was in a bathroom at the end of the world with Beth Greene, undressing down to nothing. He had never felt so bare and yet oddly so encased in something all at once in his entire life and he knew he would never be able to do this with anyone else.

It was as if in this bathroom, he and Beth had created their very own chrysalis and he knew when they emerged from this, they would never be the same people again. They would instead somehow put together the union they'd created together, this thing that was just her and just him and make it theirs together and he'd like to think it would be unlike any other change that either of them had undergone so far in this godforsaken world. Or maybe it was just him getting lost in the blue of her eyes as she slid his zipper open and eased his jeans from his hips. Maybe it was the soft gasp that came from her lips as he did the same for her, leaving them both standing in just their underwear, fingers softly and quietly exploring each newly freed plane of bare flesh.

Her skin was so pale, so perfect and goosebumps pebbled beneath his exploring fingers as his palms caressed her shoulders, sliding down over her arms and he pulled only slightly before she came hard against him, as if she was just waiting for him to beckon her into his arms.

Her lips were on his in an instant as she molded herself to him. He moaned at the feeling of her breasts pressed against him. His lips parted for her tongue as it slid against his and his hands came to slide naturally down her back to rest on her ass and it was almost instinctual the surge of their hips together as their feet gained better purchase on the tile of the bathroom floor.

He felt as her fingers came up to his waist and slid his boxers from his hips. The moan that tore from his throat as her hands closed around his length was like no sound he'd ever made before. He wasn't quite expecting it and then again he was, because that's what this had been heading for, for quite some time now.

Still he hadn't expected it to feel quite this _good_.

Sure and steady strokes sent pulse waves of light shooting behind his eyes and she stopped and pulled away. "Is this okay?" Her face was so pure, so innocent and yet so beguiling he was speechless for a moment.

"Yeah, yeah, it's good." He didn't even recognize his voice, rasped from want and dry from desire.

"We should probably turn on the water." She stepped away from him then and as she turned away he took a moment to admire her lithe form, bent over the bathtub adjusting the water. God, fucking almighty, she was perfect, he thought, his eyes hungrily raking over her backside and noting the way her thin pale yellow panties just barely covered her pert ass.

He couldn't even help himself as he closed the distance between them and pressed himself against her, his hands resting on her hips, pulling her backwards against him. She gasped in quiet surprise as his lips found the back of her neck, suckling softly at the warm flesh there, feeling her go almost limp beneath him as he held her fast to him.

He smiled against her skin, knowing he had just found a new spot on her that he loved. He had a feeling that he would be finding a lot of new spots like that tonight.

She leaned back against him and as he scattered kisses across her neck. He watched as she reached down and slipped her fingers inside the waistband to her panties and slid them from her hips, stepping neatly out of them leaving her completely bare in his arms.

She turned in his embrace and together, by some unspoken agreement, they stepped under the spray together. It was one of those huge garden tub combination shower deals and the warm water felt good and they both groaned at the feel of it. It was such a precious thing, running water, and hot water was even better. When they'd left the prison, he thought it would be the last chance they would get. But here they were, together, both of them taking this last chance too.

She turned away from the spray of the water into his arms and her eyes met his, so shy, so hesitant and he took a moment to memorize her form, every pale curve, every sweet expanse of milky white skin. She was soft and curved in all the right places, small firm breasts jutted out, her nipples hard and wet and he was consumed with a need to taste her there and his head dipped before he even thought about it, his mouth closing over the pert bud sucking it into his mouth.

Beth's hands wove into his hair, her fingernails raking his scalp lightly as her fingers massaged through the long strands. Her whispering gasps floated into the air around them and her moan as he sucked a bit harder echoed off the walls of the bathroom. His hands came to span her back and he pressed her against the wall, careful to keep his weight from her. Her fingers came up to his arms, her touch lighting flames along his spine as she curved her palms down over his biceps, past his elbows, to skate over his forearms and there, her thumb passed over the scar on his wrist and they both froze.

He pulled his lips from her breast and he knew he was slightly unfocused as he took in her curious gaze as she studied the light silvery thin line along his wrist that matched the one on hers. The one he'd put there.

" _I sure as hell never cut my wrists looking for attention."_

Oh hell. Tears of shame and regret welled up in his eyes as hers came to meet his and her expression reflected his own. All that grief he felt upon losing her was there; carved into his skin for eternity was the reminder of what he had almost lost forever.

"Oh Daryl. Was this after?" Her voice was soft in the din of the shower spray but it came through loud and clear.

"Mmm-hmmm." He turned his wrist over and showed her the scar on the back of his hand, the one he thought she had probably noticed but hadn't said anything. "This one too." It was whorled and anyone with an eye could see the telltale sign of a self-inflicted cigarette burn, as if he could have scourged the pain from his mind, body and soul when he thought she was gone from this world.

"I'm so sorry for what I said before." But she was already shaking her head. "About you lookin' for attention."

"I get it, Daryl. You don't have anything to be sorry for." Her voice was still and small but her eyes reflected back the love that he thinks had always been there; he just had to open his eyes to see it.

"I get it now too. I haven't ever felt that dead inside and I don't ever want to feel that way again." He was crying now but it didn't matter with the water raining down on them anyway and besides, she had tears coming down her face too.

"I love you, Daryl." Beth's voice was soft but sure and she pressed her lips to his quickly and then pulled away, pulling his wrist to her lips and sealing her lips over the place where he had cut sliced himself open just to feel anything but the well of fucking sadness he'd felt after he lost her. And now here she was and he felt like nothing else mattered but this moment and this girl.

"God, Beth, I love ya too." His voice was gruff as he brought her arm to his own lips and pressed them to the flesh where the undead of this world had tried to tear her apart. Then to her other arm where her scar matched his own. Then he pressed his lips softly to the scar on her cheek, then let his lips press feather light kisses all the way up until they rested against the place where the bullet tore through her skull.

So many things had tried to take her from this world, from him, and yet here she was, in his arms and he meant to show her how much that meant to him.

"Oh Daryl." He swallowed her breathy sigh, as his lips finally found their final resting place and he swallowed it down with all the grief he felt he could finally let slide away. She was here and she was okay.

After that, it was a blur of hurrying up and actually taking their shower. He made good on her request and washed her hair, lovingly working the tangles through with the fruity smelling conditioner and knowing he'd probably catch hell later when she lathered his hair up with the same brand of shampoo.

Everything was routine and almost surreally mundane as they got out of the shower and toweled off. He watched as Beth wrung her hair out and brushed it until it hung in shiny damp waves. Then she silently took his hand and they opened the bathroom door together.

There was a brief moment of giggles and gasps as they realized that the door to the bedroom was still standing wide open. Daryl half-expected the dog to be asleep on their bed, but he must still be passed out downstairs where Beth had left him.

As they walked to the bed, hand in hand, everything clicked back into focus and he just stood there for a moment as she turned to face him and reached up and pulled the edge of her towel free, dropping it to the floor and he looked at her in awe. He looked his fill and memorized her as she appeared. Every glint coming off her baby blue eyes, every sheen of her body flush and still slightly damp from their joint shower, her long lithe thighs and that tangle of damp curls at the top of her sex.

She was fucking beautiful.

He pulled on his towel as he met her eyes, his erection springing free and she stepped forward to take him in her hand, continuing her earlier movements before they had gotten into the shower and his hips surged involuntarily into her hand as he moaned and his hands came up to find purchase on her hips. He found he loved cupping his palms around the crest of hips, gripping them slightly as she continued to pump her hand over his cock in a rhythmic fashion.

He looked down at her where she was now openly looking up at him, watching his expression as his breathing became labored and he grunted with each new sensation. God, it felt fucking good and he wondered where she learned how to do this and then decided he'd rather not know all in one thought.

By some unspoken agreement, they both climbed onto the bed and laid side by side and everything sort of slowed down for a minute. The light from the lantern was casting a soft glow on the bed and the way the light cascaded over Beth he thought he could lie there all night and just look at her and admire her beauty.

He brought one hand up to trace a finger down the slope of her arm and she shivered under his touch. "You cold?"

She shook her head, her eyes wide in a soft haze as she watched his fingers continue their path as he traced an imaginary line down her arm where it rested against her side, palm flat against her thigh. Lower and lower his finger coursed until he flattened his palm when he got to her hand, his fingers closing over hers for a moment and then continuing on past her fingertips to her bare thigh.

He caressed her leg then curved his path back upward, and he looked for a moment, noting how his hand spanned almost the entire width of her thigh.

Her breath hitched and she gasped as his fingers skated higher and he looked up at her, where her eyes were flitted down, mouth slightly open, as she watched his gentle exploration of her body. Her eyes met his then and he almost didn't recognize her gaze, black bleeding into blue as her heady stare took him in. There was a quiet desperation in that look, as if she were waiting for something, waiting for him to do something.

He knew what it was. He was just taking his time. He wanted to savor every single second of this. It had been a long time coming and for him, it had been a lifetime.

A lifetime of pent up longing. A lifetime of hurt and anguish and grief that had brought him, both of them, to this moment and he meant to cherish every second.

Still, as his fingers continued their upward trail, they might have stuttered a bit in their movement as the trembling came back to claim his touch and her thighs parted as she took in his gaze. His hand came to cup her over her sex, fingers lightly combing through her damp curls to trace her slit.

She gasped against his touch and her hips arched into him and he looked up at her in rapt wonder as her legs fell out to the side and she opened herself to his open and hungry gaze. _Wet_. Wet, pink, swollen flesh greeted his sight and fuck, she felt like liquid velvet, all slippery and soft and warm. God, there was such heat here in this place where she was split for him so perfectly.

Her hands found him again, fingers closing around his cock then her fist began pumping motions, mimicking what he knew they'd shortly be doing. It was becoming urgent, her movements faster and his fingers began to explore her folds, parting her with care.

His thumb passed over her clit on one stroke and she gasped his name. " _Daryl_." He hoped he kept finding spots like this, he thought as he smiled against her hair where she'd just buried her face into his neck as he continued to rub that newfound nub as she gasped and moaned against him.

Her mouth was pressing tiny kisses to his neck and her hand was still pumping his cock and now it was his turn to gasp her name. " _Beth, god, baby_."

She suddenly moved and he froze, wondering whether he'd touched her wrong. Maybe he'd hurt her. They'd not discussed her experience or his. This was all new and it was going so fast. Maybe they should slow down.

But then she was climbing on top of him, legs resting on each side of his hips and _there._ There she was hovering over him, ready for him to enter her. He watched as she did it, lowering her heat to his throbbing hard length and he caught on fast. Leave it to her to know exactly what to do.

His hands came up to their new favorite resting spot, gripping her hips as she reached down between them, grasping his cock in her hand and sliding down, down. He watched as her lips stretched around his girth, taking him all the way in as she lowered herself into his lap as he entered her fully and they both gasped as her hands came up to find purchase on his chest.

"Oh my god," the gasp ripped up from her throat as she came to rest fully against him, his cock now seated firmly inside her.

"Fuck" was all he could manage as she began to rock against him, her pussy sliding deliciously around his cock and God, she was so fucking tight it sent starbursts of light behind his eyes and a jolt of pleasure to his cock on each thrust and he knew he wasn't going to last all that long. Not with how good it felt.

Then Beth was panting and writhing above him and he got lost in that for a moment, watching how her head was tilted back in rapture and her hands left his chest to come up to her breasts and palm them, her fingers and thumbs finding purchase on her nipples as she tweaked and pulled as she bounced her tiny form over him, each thrust calculated for maximum pleasure.

Then her movements were getting frantic and unfocused and he gripped her hips tighter to no avail. In a movement that he'd later decide was instinct, he flipped them over, until Beth was beneath him. He repositioned her thighs, moving them back slightly, hitching one higher, opening her further to his thrust as he seated himself inside her again and they both groaned anew at the changed position.

God, it was nearly blinding how good it felt pumping himself inside her this way and her hips came up off the bed with each thrust, her movements frenzied again and he remembered that newfound spot. He reached between them, his fingers finding it easily and she looked at him with a new expression and he kind of thought it looked like gratitude. His thumb pulled back the hood of skin over it and he began soft and easy strokes as he thrust his hips against hers, his cock pulsing in and out of her now in steady, sure movements to match the strokes of his fingers between them.

It was moments later when he felt her entire body go tense and then fly apart beneath him, a long and shaking release finding her until she was quaking in his arms as he slid his hands behind her and just watched as her eyes rolled back and a guttural moan was ripped from her throat and he thought he could surely die in that moment and be absolutely fine knowing that this was how he would go out of this world; watching his girl succumb to pleasure that he gave her.

Maybe that was the very thing that had him following her off that ledge moments later, but as the tight coil of tension released in his spine, he felt it low in his balls, a heavy weight and then it was punching through his core, spiraling down and out until he was spent and sweating and lying half on top and half beside of her.

There was a moment of panic then when he realized he hadn't even bothered to pull out and his head snapped up from the bed. "Oh Jesus, we didn't use anything."

Of all the things he expected, the last thing he thought she'd do was laugh but a low chuckle came from beside him.

"Daryl Dixon, if you ruin this moment I will kill you with my bare hands." He looked up at her in surprise and he had to laugh with her.

Because it really was a special moment. "Besides, I don't think we need to worry just yet. I'm still not regular." Her face flushed and he thought it was pretty cute in light of what they'd just done that she would be embarrassed at discussing something like that with him. But he also got it. This was all new. But it was also good. _So good_.

"I love you." On a swell of emotion that hit him, he pulled her up into his embrace, placing his lips against her hair.

"I love you too." She whispered as she pulled away to look at him, her hands coming up to frame his face. "So much."

She pressed her lips to his in a soft, sweet kiss and then laid back against him, both of them silent for a minute.

He wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours later when nature called, though in glancing at the window it was still full on dark outside. "I'll be right back." He whispered just outside the shell of her ear, smiling when she shivered a bit.

"Wait, where are you running off to?" Her voice was sleepy as she raised up to watch him get off the bed.

"Gotta take a piss." She giggled back at him and he didn't even bother to close the door while he relieved himself.

As he came back out of the bathroom, he heard a soft scratching outside their bedroom door. For a moment, he steeled himself for action and mentally cased where his bow was located by the door.

He then smiled upon hearing the accompanying whimper. He had almost forgotten about Samson downstairs, but it seemed as though that the pup was determined that they didn't forget about him. He opened the door and watched open-mouthed as the dog sauntered through the door, across the room and hopped up, none too gracefully with his fat clumsy paws, onto the bed to curl up beside Beth. Right in his spot.

He couldn't even be mad as he looked down at him, his head resting on his paws as if to say " _What? You had her to yourself all night_?"

"Go on then, move over." He muttered and the dog, to his credit, got up and trotted to the bottom of the bed to lie at Beth's feet.  Daryl reached over as he sat down and scratched him behind the ears, noting that his fur was soft and shiny after his bath. "Night boy."

He laid back down beside Beth who rolled over and curled her naked form into him as he pulled the cover over the both of them.

"Goodnight, Mr. Dixon." She whispered sleepily from his shoulder.

He smiled against her hair as he pressed a kiss to the side of her head and whispered back.

"Goodnight, Mrs. Dixon." He couldn't be sure but he was fairly certain she had a smile on her face big enough to light up all of the safe zone.

For the first time in a very long time, they both slept peacefully while the night marched on outside their door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a LONG time coming, I know. I hope you enjoyed it because I had a heck of a good time writing it for you. There is a lot going on in this chapter but I am very happy with how it came out. This was honestly the only chance they would have for a very long time to be able to consummate those vows and their binding ceremony up in that hayloft. 
> 
> As you can imagine, things are getting ready to heat up. Those wolves will be coming to call and I think you’re going to be surprised by how things turn out. If you are still here with me, let me know, so I know whether or not to continue. Thanks again and until next time, xoxoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think, xoxoxo


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